One Of Those Words

 

Forsake 

Psalm 27:10

When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.

forsake (v.)
Old English forsacan "object to, oppose, refuse, deny; give up, renounce" (past tense forsoc, past participle forsacen), from for- "completely" + sacan "to struggle, dispute, wrangle; accuse, blame" (see sake (n.1)). Related: Forsaking. Similar formation in Old Saxon farsakan, Dutch verzaken, Old High German farsahhan "deny, repudiate," Danish forsage "give up, refuse."

Forsake is chiefly applied to leaving that by which natural affection or a sense of duty should or might have led us to remain: as, to forsake one's home, friends, country, or cause; a bird forsakes its nest. In the passive it often means left desolate, forlorn. [Century Dictionary]

 

A couple of synonyms: abandon, desert, relinquish. 

    I got to thinking about the word a few days ago. It was one of those words that I have used. Everybody does. I wasn’t sure if I knew the accepted formal meaning of it.
   Sometimes it seems clear to me that there is a historical structure to a word, and then there is the way it is used commonly. In this case the meaning is pretty close to how it is used all the time. No wordy mystery here.
   It isn’t a nice word, is it? It is unkind. It refers to a turning away from that which we would naturally cling to. In like case as abandon, it means to drop and leave what went before.
   It might also mean to give what is being forsaken up to another, to relinquish it. To give up your rights to it. Perhaps one could say, to make a silly example, “sure, that’s my hat but since you like it so much you can have it.” I will have forsaken my hat.
   Desert seems like to escape a danger maybe. To forsake the battle, or some difficult situation.

   But to return to the 27th Psalm. It seems to be saying in expansive Hebraic poetry style, that the Lord Himself, Adonai, will never abandon, desert, relinquish or forsake us. We just have to keep on keeping on and pay attention to Him.

*!*14 Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.

The whole psalm is great! 

 The final word!

At The Interface, A Fable

 

They came into the zone of interface and stopped in their machine. I saw a desire for rest and companionable solitude about them. 

There were two of them. They sat in a machine together. One older, held the controls. One younger, a rider. Human females. They were eating and drinking some things. They were quiet and alone here.

I chose the older one.

I appeared to stand at the interface. I showed myself to her mind. She was calm. I was careful with my expression, still she called on the Maker of All to see our meeting.

She was not aware that I had approached herself only.

The older one called on the younger one to look out and see me, but of course she could not. She became somewhat frustrated with the driver because the requested action seemed like nonsense to her. This young one became busy inside their machine.

The whole scene shifted and shone to my eyes. It kept drifting. Changing. Lights came and went. Still, I held. My world at my back, hers before me.

I became as a forest man to her. I filled the picture in her mind.

As she gazed into my dimension just a little, I held up both hands to show peace between us. Palms outward and empty. It is a gesture understood by all minded beings. My intention was to not frighten her with my true form.

There is a danger here for you I formed into her mind. The interface moves, it coruscates like a beam of light. The conjunction of the worlds is not steady or quiet. Time buckles and rips, it doesn’t always align.

When one of you enters the interface unaware many times they do not survive the experience. A corpse must be given back then. This is grievous for you and for us.

Sometimes it destroys their minds for a time if they survive, sometimes forever.

The driver removed her right hand from the wheel before her and held it palm out toward me for a long moment. She showed understanding.

Without hesitation, she moved the machine out of the area and took her young passenger to safety and home.

(this follows Double Vision)

A Happy Saturday To You

 I guess when it came down to it I didn't want to post a pedantic word study.

We all know what's up.

Instead, I offer the very first strokes of a painting. The black is gesso.  Gesso goes under the actual painting, it's an undercoat.

I always like it when I first start putting it on. It looks Japanese to me.

Shabbat Shalom!

The TV News

 

“Well, Jessie, what do you think?” said Aunt Julia. 

“Well, ladies,” said Jessie. “I think that’s a pretty good idea, depending on the opinion of the mine! If the mine is willing it could be a great thing. As soon as the weather is better, I would like to just get in there and look around. I need to do some research also. You know, I have never been in a gold mine, even to look around. Uncle John didn’t take me down there. I don’t know how to go about selling gold. Essentially, I don’t know much at all about mining gold, and I have a lot to learn.

“But it’s a natural. Any gold down there belongs to you Auntie, but you could let us have a percentage for doing the work, if that sounds reasonable.”

“Let’s do fifty/fifty,” said Aunt Julia with a little grin. “If you don’t dig it out, it will stay there forever, I believe!” 

Gold in quartz.

TV News

Like a lot of elderly people, Aunt Julia had a TV, and she watched the news, and some reality shows to pass the time. She admitted that she was well aware that most TV programing was nonsense.

Jessie and I had driven the old pickup into Joseph City, looking for a heat lamp and an extension cord for the chicken house. The trading post didn’t have one, so we went on into Winthrop. Partly we just felt like taking a drive. We had lunch and found what we needed at the Walmart, of course. It’s a miracle they don’t put every other store out of business, I thought to myself.

Fortunately, there was an external electrical outlet on the mobile, so it was only the work of a few minutes to hang the heat lamp in the chicken’s little house and plug in the cord. While we were setting it up the girls came around to inspect. Since it was daytime we didn’t close them up in there.

There was one cold egg in the box I had left in there. I wished we had bought a bale of straw to make things cozier. Well, next time. In fact, I was thinking of a much more deluxe hen house when we got around to it. I was beginning to really love those little chickens.

Jessie picked up an armful of firewood and we stepped into the house. He put the firewood down and stuck a couple of pieces in the stove. I started thinking about making dinner, running what we had over in my mind.

“Jessie,” said his aunt, “I saw a very strange story on the news about that town you kids used to live in. I have a hard time believing it could be true. The story was that the landlord at a certain house went out to inspect it because his last renters had vacated the place. He found a large official looking van from some organization he had never heard of parked in the driveway. Not only that! There was a kind of robot in a human uniform on the ground with its head beaten to bits! The landlord, George something or other, said he was glad the renters had left before whatever happened there happened!”

She looked from Jessie to me, and back to Jessie.

“I can’t help but think this story has to be related to what happened to you Beth. But how?”

“I can only hope and pray that you made a clean getaway,” she said slowly. Her black eyes stayed on us as she thought aloud.

“I think we did, Aunt Julia,” Jessie said. “I believe we did. Our car is gone, God knows where. We haven’t used a credit card. We haven’t turned on our computers, and we no longer possess cellphones.

“I think we are in the best possible place for us.”

She was pleased to hear that. We had another pleasant evening with dinner together around the little table in the kitchen. Billy got some bites off of Julia’s plate and everything seemed right with the world. Who knew that Tom cats relish spicy meatballs!

Later that night I mentioned to Jessie that it was quite a good point, for our purposes, that George thought we were long gone before whatever he thought happened in the driveway happened.

I wondered if the local police would call the FBI, just because no one had heard of the organization whose name was on the paperwork in the van, with the complicating factor of the destroyed manbot lying on the ground. Jessie wondered if the FBI was well aware of the whole thing, or maybe some even higher up section of the government. Maybe NuvoMundo was some black operation of our own government.

We had no way of knowing for sure. But I had heard of NuvoMundo. I had a way of talking to strangers. One of those strangers was a guy who wanted to impress me with his knowledge. He said he was working with them. He used that name. He said they were a world-wide covert organization preparing to replace all nations. During our conversation at the coffee shop I pretended that was a perfectly reasonable and admirable goal. I did not give him my number, but someone passing by said “hi Beth, how is Jessie?”

He seemed like he might have thought he said too much. A nervous man. And now he was angry with me.

Nevertheless, this is probably why I was arrested by Garcia and Wiggles, who was no more. That, and the fact that I had gone around spreading the news. I had thought that if the people knew, maybe some sort of resistance could develop. 

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.

Link to the whole thing; They haven't taken my phone yet.docx

Maybe He Is Too Much Like Us After All

 At first I was worried.

I thought maybe,

maybe it's gone too far!

but,

Simpatico.

That's the word.

He just wants to be one of us

sometimes.

And that's fine.

Because he is still a mystery.

some of us can see him.

and some of us can't!

espresso now ralph?

What a guy!

A Quiet Christmas Day In Arizona

 

Theirs is not this fancy, but you get the idea!

In many ways Christmas day was like any other winter day in Arizona, but it dawned gloriously. The sky was breathtakingly brilliant. More snow was on the ground. It was 7am when my eyes opened, and I peeked out of the door of our hogan. 

I awoke determined to make some Christmas cookies. I decided to just put the strange happenings of the last few days before we got here out of my mind. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it anyhow. I just hoped my friends up in Washington would stay safe and below the radar.

Julia and Billy were still asleep back in her little bedroom as I entered the house and headed to the kitchen. I looked through some drawers for a cookie cutter. There was one. A star shape. That would do. After all!

I took the smallish turkey out of the freezer and put it in the sink. It wasn’t a lot bigger than a big chicken so it shouldn’t take forever.

We three had decided that we didn’t need to exchange gifts because we didn’t need anything, and it felt foolish in a way. I dreamed for a moment about what it would be like to have a child eager to get started on some packages. It was a bittersweet moment.

I didn’t find a mixer in her kitchen, but that was no problem. Making cookie dough is not a big deal. I made a large batch of sugar cookie dough and put it in the fridge to chill for an hour. Then started thinking about breakfast.

After starting the percolator up, and wishing we had at least a Mr. Coffee machine, I put a sheet pan of bacon in the oven and made a few biscuits. We had some oranges for breakfast also.

Jessie came in and I said, “I wish there was something we could do to keep the chickens warmer Jessie.”

“I know those girls are toughies, but I worry about them,” I said.

“I have an idea,” he said. “I’m going to pile dirt up around the outside of their house to insulate it a bit, and I think I will put a pile of branches inside of it for them to perch on. It won’t be traditional, but birds perch on sticks all the time. Next time I go to town I will get an extension cord and a little heater for them Beth.”

I was content then. I couldn’t help thinking about them out there.

Aunt Julia came out and took a seat. I bought her a cup of coffee and mentioned that I was making cookies while she stirred in some sugar and cream. We had breakfast. Jessie went out to pile dirt around the chicken house. I rolled out the cookie dough and sprinkled blue sugar on the cookie stars, then baked them. Cooking felt calming and normal.

With a plate of blue star cookies between us on the table I asked her, “Aunt Julia, Jessie says Uncle John worked a small gold mine here for years to support you two? Has anyone been in it since Uncle John passed?”

“No, Beth, it is abandoned, I guess. No one has worked in there since then. In fact, John didn’t go down into it during the last year of his life either.”

I said, “Jessie and I have not been discussing this, but I thought I would like to hear your opinion before I talk with him, but if there is any gold down there it seems like mining might be something Jessie and I might do a few days here and there, to bring in some money for our household here. You know, honestly, I don’t know what he would think of that idea.”

Aunt Julia was silent for a few moments. She was not one to just blurt out words without thinking. At last, she said, “young Ben, is still in school and will leave for college when he finishes high school. He does not wish to mine for gold. His father is a rancher and is busy. My daughter, Mary, has only one adult daughter. Neither of them wants to mine gold I am very sure.

“Maybe if we both put the idea in front of Jessie, he will think seriously about it. This is not the time of year for mining. It’s too cold down in the earth. Maybe when it warms up later this next year.” She smiled. 

“It would surely be a way to stay relatively invisible and still bring in some money,” she said. “There is a guy in Winslow who buys gold.”

That subject at least discussed between Julia and I, I set about making our Christmas dinner. I am what they used to call a good plain cook. So, the dinner was no big deal and after all, it was just the three of us. It was turkey, gravy, stuffing from a mix and green salad.

After dinner, as evening was darkening the sky, we finished off the fruitcake and drank the other bottle of champagne. Jessie tried some of my cookies and said that they were nice. The little artificial Christmas tree twinkled, and it seemed like a fine Christmas day. In fact, I was very happy.

Sitting in her chair, holding Billy as usual, Aunt Julia said, “Jessie, Beth and I talked about your Uncle John’s mine today. I expect that there might still be gold down there. It’s not very deep. She and I were thinking that you two might be able to get a little gold out of there. Gold is very expensive right now.”

He sat forward on the sofa beside me. His fingers were laced together around a knee as she spoke, and he didn’t look altogether surprised. Maybe he had been thinking that way himself.

“Well, Jessie, what do you think?” said Aunt Julia.

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

A Timely And Pertinent Question For All

 

(^!^)

It's about our pets.

What is the most astounding stunt your little beast has pulled, be it uncanny, intellectual, messy or just plain weird?

I have a story, a true story, which I have told before but I will tell again because it is, I think, the strangest thing I ever had an animal do.  There might be a second story in this category also.

As you know, for eleven years we shared our lives with a wolf girl, Layla.  One time when she was still a big ol' kid wolf, I was sitting with her and my daughter and granddaughter on the floor of daughter's apartment.

Daughter brought out a load of dry laundry to fold and sort.  There were a lot of colored socks in the load. So, as sort of a joke, I said to Layla, "go get me a yellow sock!"  And she did.  OK.  So I said, "go get me a green sock."  She did this also.  Weird!  Then as a final test, I said, " Layla, get me a red sock." She got me a red sock!  Ohmygoodiness!  This was too weird for me.  I didn't ask her for a blue or purple or black one.  I was done.

Now, it is true that Layla and I had kind of a mind lock going always.  Strange thing.

My other weird story is about a hen named Beepers.  SIL named her.  Not me.  Anyhow one time, out at Tulalip, this chicken began to attack all the males in the family.  I thought, now this is getting out of hand and seems evil. 

So, I got my trusty little bottle of olive oil, went out to Beepers.  I anointed her little head with oil and told whatever damned spook that was hanging out on her to get lost.

All her feathers went out straight from her body, making her look like a chicken puff-ball.  Her feathers went back down, and she never attacked any of the guys again!!!

So? Got any animal stories?  Would love to hear!