Early Thanksgiving

Sometimes the most difficult of times can also be the best of times. 

When you find yourself seemingly trapped by circumstances that are overwhelming you may be lucky enough to discover that there are people who will stand by you that you would not have dreamed would do so.  These are times to cherish.  They teach you trust.  They also teach you humility.

So often we go through our days thinking that the battles we face, we face alone. This does not have to be true.  Being strong does not have to mean standing alone.  It can mean having the courage to allow people to stand both for and with you.

I learned this today.  It is a lesson I hope I will not soon forget. 

Despite my basement ceiling and my angry washing machine,  despite the daily concerns that nag at me as they nag at each of us, I have learned that I am indeed not alone.

In this world of mass confusion,  where our ability to communicate without ever seeing or perhaps even knowing those we touch with our words can create friendships that span continents, we find ourselves graced in ways we have not truly explored.  We also take a chance on losing our ability to remain in touch with the now of our daily lives.  We may take for granted the people that interact with us in each moment, large and small.

I have done this.  Yet to my very pleasant surprise, these people have not taken me for granted. 

When I needed them most they stepped up to stand beside me.  They silently moved to be there.  To hold ground with me and to make my world a place filled with light and balance.

Take the time to look around you and to give thanks for everyone who has time to say hello, offer a smile and a greeting.  These are the people who will one day be there for you too. I suspect they will be the people you will find yourself stepping up for as well.

In the end our world is not quite so complex as we may think.  It still comes down to who we choose to be.

I am grateful for the people in my life.

An early Thanksgiving to you all.

Smile, Looks Like You Made It

Once a favored path
Soft under the feet
moss and sand

Once a favored path
Curving with shrubs that brushed lightly
Conveying a light caress

Now a cold haunted walk
Hard-edged and cutting
glass and gravel

Now a cold haunted walk
Snaking with wind-whipped branches
Slicing to the bone

Time often takes a toll
But Man takes a heavier one
exacting vengence

Time often takes a toll
Yesterday is made of sterner stone
today is flimsy

It crumbles on that
hard edge
it falls to the glass and gravel
it grinds beneath your boot

Not shattered
Simply gone
Looks like its finally been un-done

All the light-filled joys
the moss and sand path
gone
No haunting loveliness
No cuttings of beauty
Gone

Crumbled to dust
under your boot

The birth of a void
are you Proud now?
Did you finally get
your Heart's desire?

Smile
Look's like you made it...

Racquet Ball Laws of Etiquette

I can hear the words echo as they leave my mouth

They bounce around the room
Loudly at first and then gradually their volume falls
as their velocity drops
like a racquetball no one returns serve on

They slowly roll to a dismissive halt

I know that you heard me
You did not just nod and smile
You wrote it all down
You paraphrased it back
You took the time to reassure me
To ensure that I would feel safe in being heard

Yet I can hear the words echoing
Bouncing off the walls
As meaningless as the un-returned serve

Dismissed, despite your knowing attitude

I know enough now to trust to silence
The next time I am speaking to you
You can keep the racquet
I won't be serving anymore

Mechanical Replacements -

Some days are just harder than others.  To put it mildly, Sunday was not a day of rest at my abode. 

I have been struggling with a washing machine that has a mind of its own.  On Sunday it decided to unleash its wrath upon me and my house.  I guess not all mechanical relationships are meant to last.

But, I am getting ahead of my story. 

The "Machine" decided to go into perpetual spin cyle about 8 days ago. Part of the spin also included having a permanently locked door, so I was unable to just open the washer and end its activity that way.  As I was working solid at the office (9am-3am) for our annual craziness sprint, I decided the easiest fix was just to unplug it.  I was wrong.  Let me repeat this for anyone who might make this mistake when dealing with a washer gone crazy.  I was wrong.

Five short (or long) days later, depending on who was living through them, I found myself with my first real day off. I also found myself inexplicably standing in a puddle of water on my mud-room floor.  It made no sense at all to me.  How and why would a washing machine, with no power running to it, begin to leak?  It was dry as a bone when I unplugged it.  I mopped up the mess and went back to my leisurely day of trying to get the rest of the house in order.  A couple of hours later I returned to the mud-room, only to find a new puddle.  Perplexed, I mopped this up and followed the trail this time, discovering that the washer was dripping from the barrel.  With nothing to lose at that point, I climbed back over the top and plugged it back in, hoping that it would spin and get rid of the water it had collected.   Amazingly, as soon as I plugged it back in it started to spin and make a lovely draining sound.  What was equally miraculous was that it made the sound for the door latch popping free.

Finally, I could end the entire spin-cycle issue.  I would still need to get a repair man out, but at least the drip and the frozen door issues would be solved.  I crawled off my perch and returned the chair to the kitchen. 

And then.............. I opened the door.  This was not a wise idea.  Just in case you did not expect me to say this, let me once again repeat, THIS WAS NOT A WISE IDEA. 

Nearly a full barrel of water poured out of the Machine, flowing all over my recently mopped floor, drenching me from the waist down and covering me ankle deep when it settled. Hell hath no fury like a machine unplugged!

It probably does not need to be noted, but I did not spend anymore of my day nipping about leisurely putting the house to rights.  No indeed I did not.  I spent the rest of the afternoon bucketing up the water from my mudroom floor, creating barricades so it would not escape into the kitchen, and generally feeling like a very wet moron.  And perhaps a moron does what I did next, which is to put my soaking towels into the Machine to spin (they were too heavy to wrestle to the laundromat). Would you believe that 7 loads of laundry later, I had everything that had been drenched and the laundry I had saved up during busy-season taken care of? Yes, I did.  I decided I was too tired to go to the laundromat, and if the spin cycle worked, why not try a whole cycle?  And if it worked once, why not just keep going?

Of course, now I just have to get the basement ceiling fixed - yes the water seeped through despite my best efforts. And I have to make sure that the mud-room floor is solid and no other damage has been done that I cannot see.

And  I really need to......replace the "machine".  Please don't read this outloud.  I don't want "it" to know until they come to get "it".  I realize that right now we seem to be at peace and the laundry is processing nicely.  But you see, I just don't trust our relationship anymore.  So I think I will have to donate this to a home that perhaps "it" will treat with more kindness than it has me of late. 

I have tried to be a good washer-owner.  I use the right soaps for its type.  I don't use harsh detergents or ones that are bad for the environment. I even use the cleaner that they recommend on TV.  I am not sure what I have done to sour the relationship so badly.  Except perhaps being gone so much lately.  I really have not given the poor thing much attention of late.  I suppose that could be reason enough.  Yet I just can't let this behavior slide.  It really was over the top for a mechanical tantrum.

So working or not,  I will have to say goodbye.  Rather sad though - we've worked hard together over the years.  And there is something very rewarding in a relationship built on mutual respect and hard work.

In any event. let this be a warning to you all.  Do not ignore your appliances. Do not let them take advantage of you either.  Their tantrums could end up with you bailing water, changing drywall and considering what color to paint the basement ceiling.

Stay dry my friends - ....................stay dry

Endings (Daymares Concluded)

Fragments and figments blend together, a swirl of pigments with few hues.  I can faintly make out rhythmic drip that sustains me.  I no longer care. 

What I want more than anything else is another dream.  A glimmer of freedom.  Anything that takes me away from being where I am.  This semi-vegetative state has become unbearable.  I believe if I had the strength, I would pull the tubes free, and perhaps in that way find the freedom that eludes me.

My non-existent toes have become an obsession of late.  I am sick of only having ten digits I can count on. (And even these ten digits are not ones I freely control.) Who ever created this place did not view me as a being with any rights onto itself.  I mean as much to them as the blades that cut; only a means to an end.  I can only speculate as to what those ends might be, yet I am finally tired of being a part of it.  I no longer believe there is a way out for me.

I have given up on the concept of a way out.  I have deserted myself.  The truth does not always set you free it seems, sometimes it just makes it clear how truly imprisoned you are.

I would moan with the agony of my loss.  For it does seem a loss, this parting with my belief in a "rescue" from my constraints, it seems I know longer know how to believe in even that.  So I lay here, my head in its softened trap and simply stare at the blades above me.  I don't even bother to question them anymore. It is pointless. As pointless as breathing.  But the machines keep me at that, so you see, I am given little choice in anything.

I let me my mind drift to grey and steady it there.  A pure clean slate of solid grey.  No subtle variations in tone, no shafts of light or dark. A blank sheet of grey, solid and almost comforting in its un-relieved state of total absentinence from the taint of any other thought. 

It is some time before I hear the sounds in the hall.  The clicking of the heels followed by the heavy heel-toe step of what I assume is the man in dress shoes I heard when the grinding noise occurred.  I hold onto my slate of grey, pushing their sounds out, and concentrating on the comfort of its cold shield.

Abruptly I note that the click-click of the heels and the dress-shoe slap seem to have stopped very near. Try as I might the grey shifts to the rectangular silver with the darkness and the light cut into it.  I can hear the sound of something moving, a door-handle, or a door perhaps?  I do not shift my head.  It is unlikely I would be able to see that far into the space I am in, and besides, I think perhaps I would rather not know if the shoes are coming to see me. 

I am certain a visit from them would bode nothing good.

I try to bring back my lovely grey wall, but find the strangely striated-blue shifting in and out of its smooth texture instead. 

I can hear them breathing now. They are definitely here with me. 

The sliver of white with blue forms on my slate.  It curves itself around the striated blue forming an arc of white like a half moon. 

I can feel the heat from them radiating against me.  Their presence makes this sterile room seem infected.  Whatever it is they are saying I cannot make out the words.  It sounds like gibberish.  A hand flashes in front of my face.  A light piericing my eye.

My mind runs from the light.  I pull myself viscerally back to the grey wall.  The white rimmed blue curve remains there, cupping the striated blue.  I stare at it as if it is a puzzle waiting to be pieced together.  I can hear them moving, mumbling to each other, their voices appear to be conflicted.  The dark sliver flashes to me then. I can almost grasp where it belongs. 

One of them has a hand on my arm above where the primary tube goes in, the other hovers near my chest by a secondary tube.  They appear to have reached a decision.  I can feel the tape being prized loose from my skin, parts of the skin tearing with the tape.  I guess the tape has been there a long time. 

The dark piece floats into place on the puzzle and I find myself looking at a part of a memory so clear that it almost lifts my head out of the cradle. That eye, that flecked blue eye, is a part of who I am.  My mind races off after that thought even as it notes that they have taken the tubes out.

It does not matter, I do not have time to reflect on what will happen in that room any longer.  I have to follow this spark of memory.  Perhaps I have finally found my escape. 

In more ways than one it would seem.

Daymares 10

I watch silently. Happy for once that the light is slipping away.  It has been over an hour now that my world has gone back to the controlled silence it has always had before.  No more grinding, no more shoes in the hall.  The drip in my tubes and the sound of my own breath is all I can hear.  What disturbs me most is that this truly is all I can hear.  There are no piped in noises to make me believe there is a world outside my window.  No wind playing games with leaves.  No birds.  Not even a cricket.  I think they forgot to turn the system on.

And this is why I am happy the light is slipping away.  I think perhaps this might mean that I can actually tell night from day in this place.  It had occurred to me that the light was also part of the show.  And I suppose it still could be.  Perhaps the grinding was just the sound system breaking down?  I have decided to go with what gives me comfort and believe that the light follows the sun and not a circuit board somewhere. Today it has been unusually grey.  I had expected rain.  Now it is simply fading to black.  And with the black will come the blades.  I am ready now.  I have spent so much of the day tied up in internal knots that I believe I have made myself numb to them already.

I try to recall the little scraps I have held of myself. The curved sliver of white with its round of blue.  The fragment chocolate so dark it could be black and a rectangle of light.  That odd piece of greyed-blue with the strands of brown in it.  None of them seem to fit together, yet I feel that they do belong together.  I have no idea why.  They just seem right when I think of them as belonging to a  whole.  Like a part of a set where the master piece is missing.  Odds are over a trillion to one that I will find the missing fragment,(fragments) that will put this puzzle together, yet I can't help wishing for the next clue.

The daydreams have been nice.  I know they are probably not the images the warders here would like to be culling from me, but I can't exactly force my mind to give them what they want.  Especially since I am not really sure what that might be.  Fragments of conversations caught through the door in what must have been at least a year or more ago, hardly bear remembering.  "Quality imagination that one"...."Get some good images"...."I'd by that for my kid, make them feel safe and warm of a night"....... I can't say that much that I have thought or dreamed lately would make anyone fell safe and warm, even in daylight.

Daylight, that has left me now.  The blades have begun the slicing dance.  Cut after rotating cut, I can feel the rain of fragments fall about me.  Where once I would have asked, "Why?"  Now I find myself anxiously wondering, "When?"  When will I find another fragment?  Will it be the right one?  Will I know what to do with it when I find it?  Is there really a way out?

Is that the light of the sun or simply a computer driven vision meant to keep me occupied while they cycle away my opportunities to live my days?