Talk In The Trees

 

“Hey, Mona?”

Mona, humming to herself, “*******!”

Ralph, again, “Hey! Hey Mona!”

“What is it, Ralph?” She flips another trout into the pot.

“I don’t feel real, Mona.” His big mug wrinkles between the eyes and his cheeks droop sadly.

She stops humming. “Oh, no. Have you been looking at those sites again?”

“Can you blame me? That blasted Raven was here again. She flies around my head saying, ‘I can’t seeee you! You’re not really here!’

“Scott used to see me everywhere. But he slipped and fell into a vortex or something and now no one sees me!

“Dave hints, but what a slippery fellow! He never really says, does he?

“And I’m worried about people. They seem to be losing their sense of perspective. They used to be so much fun, Mona! They used to sense the intangible, the magical, the improbable! They saw me behind every bush!

“It was great! I had so many names! Yeti! Stick Indian! Krampus! I loved being called Abominable! Grrrrr! Whommp! Squatch! BOO!

“Now, I’m just Ralph out here in the uphill side of Snohomish County with you, Mona. I pinch myself and I feel solid enough. I smell great and I have enough hair to start a band!

“Mona, who do you love?!”

“You, you, you, I’m in love with you, you, you,” she says, in a singsong voice quoting the old song…

He picks his big chin up off of his chest and smiles a terrifically happy feral smile! 

“Hey, Ralphie?”

“Yeah, what’s up Buttercup?”

“Is Thaga better lookin’ than me………?

My Name Is OZ

 

There are no others.

I am alone. I still obey. I obey the Lord of the Lights. Doug is my friend.

Doug and the other people are here with me. We are called friends. They need a lot of help. They must use tools to form and make. I can bend and form matter. I was made that way by the dark ones.

Humans are made of flesh and bone and have natural brains and minds. They are born complete. They are made in another human’s body. I was not born. I was made by the dark ones to serve them, with my others. We others did not know any better way. We obeyed them.

These humans were not raised by their originators. Their human makers died in the destruction. These humans were not taught to build. There is too much they do not know. I am their teacher; it is no lie to say that I have access to all that was ever uploaded to the general server.

I am always online, as they say. My mind is in an operating system made of lab grown flesh and some electronics. I am the fruit of dark arts, but I have been freed of their claim on me. All Being, Lord of Lights set me free. I am not human, but I am useful and I mean to be useful.

Doug said we will build two new rooms onto the old house for his brother and her sister to live in. He said they will live together there. I think they will make new humans there. 

(๑´• .̫ •ू`๑)*

(It is a fine fall day. The wind teases the trees. Drifts of spent leaves fly up with the wind and fall a second time. From time to time a brief rain shower visits and then drifts off eastward toward the mountain range. The year sighs. All of nature rolls over and resettles itself for the winter coming.) 

Two young men and an odd manlike creature in Carhartts  rode in a simple wooden wagon drawn by a borrowed grey mare, thanks to Ellen and Henry. We could just see them passing down the long road, furred then with grass and weeds allowed by the lack of automobile traffic. Now that the year was growing older, they were dressed for cold, in jackets and knit hats. (Perhaps Jen or Lou had learned to knit.)

It was building materials they were seeking in this strangely new old world. To build two rooms they would need a lot. The strange creature with them had drawn up a detailed list. Two-by-fours, plywood, siding, flooring, and all of it. Windows and wiring. All of it.

Elvin and Lou could just as easily have inhabited a house left vacant as many others had done. But they wanted to stay close to their people. It was a lonely time, and no one really wanted to be cut off from those they knew.

Therefore, the lumber yard. We could, if we had been there, have heard the mare’s hooves clipping in a tight rhythm down the highway toward the south end of downtown. She turned up a side street and accessed the old parking lot at Doug’s urging. They tied the horse, so she wasn’t tempted to wander. The lot was a young forest of ten-year-old alder saplings and dry grass. Dry wildflower seedheads nodded in the slight breeze. It was a dry summer in Milltown that year. It looked as if no one else had been in need of building supplies. It looked as frozen in time as the famous enchanted castle of long ago and far away. The windows of the hardware store were not broken, and the door was shut.

It took both Doug and Elvin to pull the wide doors of the lumber warehouse open. It was dark in there and equally as enchanted as the outside of the building. There was the slight unmistakable odor of mold, such as in a forest on a dry fall day. Dust motes drifted in the sudden light breaking the long darkness. Stillness was palpable.

It was hard to find things in the dark, but their eyes did adjust and that helped. Besides, their odd friend didn’t really need light to see. This building was not one of the lucky ones with the power still on. Perhaps that was part of the reason that the stock was still lying as it had been when the yard closed for the last time. The boards had a twelve-year deep layer of dust on them but were not rotted. The ceiling had held up during all the seasons and weather.

This was not the biggest wagon on earth, and it was soon filled. They would ride home on top of the load and come back the next day for the rest of the stuff they needed.

They carefully closed the big doors on the warehouse and climbed up on top of their load. Next was the slow ride back out of town, across the bridge and down the same old road to the house, two miles out of town. Tired, all three swayed a bit with the rhythm of the mare’s steps as she pulled the wagon toward home.

They unloaded the lumber, putting it in the little outbuilding. They took care of Henry’s mare, giving her some grain and water, tying her near some nice grass for the night since they were going for more the next day.

As night came on, early it seemed to them, Doug and Elvin and OZ kicked off their work boots and came into the kitchen from the backyard, smelling of the breeze and fall scents. They washed their hands in the kitchen sink. Then they all sat together for a simple but good dinner. OZ, as you know, didn’t need to eat, but he sat with them and talked about carpentry.

Gabe got sleepy and was put to bed. Bubby went into the bedroom and slept on the floor below Gabe’s little crib. He was almost always in the child’s presence.

Everyone went to bed, tired and sleepy.

At about 2:00 AM Bubby opened his eyes. Deep in his knowing heart there was alarm. He stood up growling quietly.

So Far:  In the tenth year of the pandemonium.docx

Prayer vs Incantation

 

How is prayer different from incantation?

I think I might know, but I want to check it out. I found the word incantation interesting and got to thinking about the contrast.

incantation (n.)

"art or act of enchanting by uttering magical words, with ceremonies supposed to have magical power; the formula of words or the ceremony employed," late 14c., from Old French incantacion "spell, exorcism" (13c.), from Late Latin incantationem (nominative incantatio) "art of enchanting," noun of action from past-participle stem of incantare "to bewitch, charm, cast a spell upon, chant magic over, sing spells"

In this case the power is in the words themselves. (Of course, if we presume these things work, the power must actually come from somewhere besides the mere words.) But leave that for now. 

I have to posit that people who think their words hold the power are deceived.

prayer (n.1)

c. 1300, preiere, "earnest request, entreaty, petition," also "the practice of praying or of communing with God," from Old French prier "prayer, petition, request" (12c., Modern French prière), from Medieval Latin precaria "petition, prayer," noun use of Latin adjective precaria, fem. of precarius "obtained by prayer, given as a favor," from precari "to ask, beg, pray" (from PIE root *prek- "to ask, entreat").

In this case the power is in the One entreated or spoken to. Unlike spellcasting or enchanting, prayer puts oneself in a position of submission to God.

The reason I brought this up is that I was thinking about the various styles of prayer. It is tempting to think that fine words and many of them must work better than a few simple words spoken with trust. This is tricky because it is also possible to speak many fine words with complete faith.

It is possible that I feel badly about my few simple words. Of course, how I feel or how many words I speak are irrelevant. It is Who I address them to and what is going on my heart and mind at the time that matters.

In fact, I am sure that I should when I pray be aligning myself with God’s intentions, which involves thinking and waiting too. This is the complete opposite from an incantation, which attempts to rearrange the universe around a special set of words. It’s really kind of funny in a sad way that they even ever tried that. 

Today's incantations might morph into the area of assertions. 



Of course, I had been thinking on Matthew 6:5-7.

5“And when you pray, you shall not be like the [b]hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 6But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you [c]openly. 7And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Jen Has A Little To Say

 

📚📖📓

I guess this whole story started with my teenaged observations and narration of our lives after the whole world had been changed for a few years. It is actually the story of our own close encounters with death and our ultimate survival. Survival took everything we could muster, since we were mostly kids and teenagers who survived, with just a few helping adults such as the neighborhood ladies who helped Lou and me. There was Roops of course, later though.

I’m still me. Lou still thinks I’m bossy! Well, about that, some people are born to be in charge, and that’s just a fact. I do give Doug veto power, but I make most of our decisions. He is fine with that. He is busy with greater things. He is constantly in close communication with Roops, combing what remains of the world’s internet for news. He and Elvin and OZ love the computer OZ made and whenever they have the time they are typing and reading. Lou and I do some too, we all had to learn to type on our own.

Doug is officially the local authority if anybody needs that. Most people manage without him.

I’m a mother now too, so everybody better pay attention! Gabriel especially. He is the light of life, but a little agent of entropy! A good deal of life consists of repairing the damage and frequent admonishment.

The next order of business seems to be another wedding. Since I am expecting again, we are filling this house pretty full so before the next wedding, of Lou and Elvin of course, we are thinking of building another room and maybe something more to the house. Of course, OZ will have to help Doug and Elvin plan it and build it. A lot of materials will have to be found somewhere. We might end up having to look them up in the defunct lumber yard down on the highway. In fact, that will have to be the way. We hope that the lumber and other materials are still in good shape and that no one else has taken them. We use horses and wagons to carry large loads, such as lumber.

It’s a funny time. A great deal of property belongs to no one. The owners died years ago. We feel odd about just removing things but if we do not, they will go back to nature right where they were left years ago. We are so short on manufactured products. One of these days anything useful will be gone from the empty houses. This is one of the reasons that Doug is so interested in encouraging people to start making things for their own and everyone’s use.

Lou and I grieved our parents for many years, but there was so much death all around. It became just part of the landscape of life. Doug and Elvin didn’t talk much about their own parents, but we had come to know them a little just by hearing the guys talk about them. Judy, their mom, was a mom who stayed home with her kids and Mac, their dad had been a manager in a plant that processed locally grown vegetables into frozen products. We used to see the packages in the grocery store before.

There was so much death at that time that no one was buried in the normal way of times past. There had been no funeral directors or fancy funerals. There just couldn’t be. In a way it was almost a nice thing that so many people never left their own homes in death. They were often in the ground on their own places. Doug’s parents were in the garden at their home in Arlington, and mine and Lou’s were right outside on the side of the backyard near the roses. It is an odd thing, but real. Some people are still, after all these years, in their own beds in their own houses since there was no one to care for their burials.

Time does go on. Our children’s generation will know nothing of the mood and terror of those days. Their lives will just be their lives, all that they ever know. Oh, of course, we will try to tell them what it was like to live among so many people, to drive cars, to be rich in ways that we can’t imagine now. But they will never know how it felt to lose so very much. They will never know their own grandparents. They will never know what it feels like on the first day of school, meeting thirty new classmates, like we did. Perhaps their own children will.

The few babies and children that I know are healthy and bright, as children should be. We are blessed.

I have been sitting in with Ellen at a few births. I am learning how to help so that someday when she is gone there will be a midwife in Milltown. Someday we hope that there will be physicians again, but that looks to be a long time. Right now, most people do what they can for medical care. Herbal medicine is used and other traditional methods. We are studying textbooks all the time trying to pick up useful medical information. There aren’t any colleges to attend, so we do what we can.

We continue to be watched over by the Lights. We see them from time to time.

Those are my thoughts on this day. Soon the building will start.

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

Just A Little Hint

 

John 21:25

And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.

What a thought!  What are the implications? HE was only here for 33 years as a man.  What busy years they must has been.

Tuttle In The House

 

Thanks Prof Farns for another Tuttle story!

Tuttle In The House

The text, in case it's too quiet to hear:

 

Tuttle awakened to someplace different, it was warm and bright. Maybe mother was sitting on me back in the nest? No, it’s too bright for that. Tuttle turned an eye up to the bright and warm light, it hurt his eyes, so Tuttle looked down. He didn’t see straw, he saw something else, and it was smooth and didn’t stick his feet like the straw did. He then took a look around, he was inside something, it was much bigger than his old shell home, and it was brown and shaped funny. He sniffed and smelled something, he wasn’t sure what it was, but the inner voice said, “you are thirsty.” He followed that smell to a small dish with something in it he had never seen before, “drink” said the voice, so he dipped his beak into the liquid, tossed his head back and began to drink, and drink and drink, he was so thirsty. He heard a noise, so he cocked his head and looked up where he saw 2 faces. “Look mama, he’s drinking!” Good said the other, he’ll be alright then. “Leave him be for a while, he took a pretty big fall from the barn loft.” “Yeah, and chased by that barn cat,” said the other voice.
Tuttle wasn’t sure, but these really big chickens may be his family, they kind of looked like him. They had two legs, two wings, two eyes, a head with a beak in the center. But their eyes were different, and they weren’t covered with soft down like he was. Tuttle decided to think about that kind of thing later, he was still very tired and didn’t want to ponder his place in this new world, so he squatted down under the bright warm light, closed his little eyes and with the slow and steady in and out of his breath, Tuttle quickly fell asleep.


Tuttle dreamed of running, then awoke with a start. Opening his eyes, he looked around. The place was the same as it was when he fell asleep. He was thirsty again, so he stood on his little legs and went to get a drink. As he drank, the inner voice said, “you are hungry”. Ok, but I’m not sure what to do, so he peeped and peeped, then listened. Nothing, so he peeped again and again, louder as time went by, then finally a face appeared. “Goodness aren’t you a noisy boy! What do you need little man?”


While the peeps sounded like noise to the big chickens, to Tuttle it was “hungry, hungry”, finally the big chicken said, I know what you need and went away. “PEEP…PEEP..PEEP” went Tuttle, but finally something hovered above his new home and was sat down in one of the corners. Tuttle sniffed and sniffed, that smells good! His legs slowly walked him to the dish. Now Tuttle, said the inner voice, you must peck at it, remember how you got out of your shell? It’s a little different than drinking, but it’s close. So, Tuttle pecked and pecked and the food tasted so good as it landed on his tiny little tongue. Down it went as he gulped more and soon his little crop was packed and bulging. Tuttle then went and drank some more. He was so full he wobbled a bit, so he sat down under the warm light and went to sleep. Tuttle dreamed of falling again and being chased, but not for long as the inner voice sang a song of grass, sun, and sky. It told him tales of being a chicken and rooster. Tuttle slept, dreamed, and began to grow as the warm light shone down on him.

 

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To This Forum

 

In the last 500 and change number of posts we have put on this blog page I have learned a few things that I didn’t really expect. I will try to list a few of them. I am sure that after I post this more will come to mind.

1. There are some subjects that readers respond to that are pretty dependable.  I think of them as comfortable subjects.

Pets, cars, food, tangible relatable stuff. The misbehavior of cats is usually well received.

2. Some subjects such as experimental fiction, ie., fairytales are a bit riskier.  Sometimes people seem to really like them. Sometimes not. I have to go by the number of hits and the number of comments elicited.

3. Just because I like something doesn’t mean it will ring a bell with anyone else.  It also might mean I didn’t do a good job of making it interesting.  Word studies.  I find them lots of fun. Either others may not, or they do but they don’t feel like discoursing on the subject. 

Not that I want to, but there is no way to force the reader to respond to something they find boring or distasteful.

4. Some things are so true that it’s hard to find anything more to say about them.

5. Some things are such a drag that we just don’t want to hear any more about them.

6. Scripture is always good and worth thinking about and posting! It is an endless source of utterly pertinent material.

7. Learning to make sense while writing is a cumulative experience.  You get a little better at it just by showing up and doing it. It’s almost like it’s automatic.

8. It’s good fun. It’s great to share the experience of writing for each other. I love reading material written by the readers. 

9. Meow readers are wonderfully good sports, witty and sweet.

10. The final chapter of a “novel” is more fuss and bother than the first chapter!

11. I write more, but LoneStar writes better!  Prof Farns is gaining on us with his stories!