Things Have Been Empty As Of Late

"I've gone ahead and changed without you.  Things have been empty as of late."

I stretch my legs out on the sand.  It feels cold on the surface but if you dig your fingers deeper, it's still warm from the afternoon sun.  We have no blanket to sit on.

"Empty as I said but they're still going on.  Moving forward."

It's a gray overcast day and a mild breeze is blowing.  I am dressed in slim cut blue pants, nearly new ankle boots, a black cashmere sweater, and a corduroy peacoat.  The sea is the color of silvery steel tinged with white and blue.

I am wearing Raybans.

"Have you forgotten about me?"  Mr. Gryphon looks at me, his great golden eyes blinking slowly.

"No."

"Then where the hell have you been?"

"Not in Hell, not here.  I still haven't missed the story, though.  It may seem things are moving on but they haven't.  The story still remains to be told."

"Take off those damn sunglasses, please.  I never get to see you anymore and I want to see your eyes."

I pull them off, squinting at first, tucking them into my coat pocket.  I do not reply to his comment.  I don't do this because I don't have to.  He merely wants to vent a little so I let him.

"You are insufferable, Miss Turtle."

"Your patience is much appreciated, Mr. Gryphon."  I am not looking at him instead I stare out to sea.

"Hrmmph."

"Mock Turtle and Gryphon are always together and you are always here.  With me."

"What about those others?"

"Yes, they are here as well and perhaps I've been focusing a lot on them lately but you're the only one who actually follows me around.   You're sitting behind me right now on our red couch as I write this post.  The others usually only show up in the stories."

"Except for that one guy who just sort goes where he wants."  He sounds sulky.

"He's an angel.  Leave him be."

"I was an angel.  Did you know there's some evidence that griffins originated as angels or vise versa?"

"I think you might have mentioned that before."

"He must have an ingot to have that kind of free access to everywhere.  Can't he stay in the library with the rest of the folks.  Or in the mansion?  Aren't there enough tunnels and blue doors for him to explore?"  He kicks a little sand.  It's low tide and the water has peeled back to reveal dark brown sand.

I smile.  "He just likes hanging around in places.  Don't worry, he will soon fall in love and stay within his story after that.  Besides, why can't he or anyone else in the stories wander around?"

"They don't know all the rules and start confusing things.  There are a lot of them.  And they always freak with they see T-Rex and they gawk at the frogs.  They just...mix things up."

"That's not the only reason why you're uncomfortable, Mr. Gryphon.  You know just as well as I do that there's plenty of room for everyone."

"They don't know us at all." He is hugging his knees and looking down at the sand.

"Maybe you should all try to get to know each other."

"Hmmph."

"You're just grumpy today."

"Grumpy everyday," he mutters.

"Yes, and I know that's my fault."

"Been too long," he says.

"Yes, it has been.  I'm sorry.  It's just been tough lately."  I scoot closer to him.  He glances at me then tentatively reaches out and puts his feathery arm around me.  I settle against him.  He is warm and his scent is comforting.

"Someone once told me my problem wouldn't be writer's block.  It would be that there are too many damn stories and I would have difficulty with sorting them out and getting them done.  He was right about that.  And now my attention suffers from the lack of time and energy."

"You're mentioned that before, Miss Turtle."

"I mention it because it's something I need to work on.  Better scheduling, focus, or something."

"Just a variation of your Endurance concept."

"Is that all?" I sigh.  "You make it sound so easy."

"It's not easy.  None of it is.  You think everyone can write a blog post like this one?"

"I suppose not."  I hear the strains of a quartet behind me.  "Speaking of the frogs, what have they got up to?"

"I asked them to set up at the edge of The Forest and play a few tunes towards sunset time."

"Is it that time?"

"Nearly."

"Well, lets go in for some tea before dinner."

"We need to have an adventure.  Everyone is restless about it."

"You especially, I'm sure."  I stand up with his help and we walk across sand towards The Forest.  The frogs are dressed beautifully, all in lace jabots, velvet waistcoats, and fine frock coats.  Their music is lovely.  We nod at them as we pass.

"I've asked them to play during dinner."

"Good."

"You'll join us, won't you?"

I smile up at him, tucking my arm in his.  "Of course."

We walk on.  The Forest is bursting with green even with the overcast day.  We take a well-worn path to my Library.  The Forest recedes and we walk down the gentle rolling hill towards the pond.  Swans drift in majesty.  I look up at the huge doors and massive stone steps.  It has been a long time since I've been here.  We climb the steps and take one of the smaller side doors in.  When I step through the massive threshold, the Library staff are waiting, all decked out in velvet robes.  They bow.

"Guys, no need to be so formal," I say but I'm still very pleased that they've come to meet us.  One of them helps me out of my jacket.  Mr. Gryphon reaches out to take my hand.  I slip my hand in his and give it a good squeeze.  We walk down the steps into the massive reading room with its stunning cathedral architecture.  It's good to be home.

Fire and Brimstone

Step forward into the light, calls the sound.  A blast of trumpet, a musical scream that wakes everyone up.

We all get up from our beds and graves.

We look at our hands and the sky and the mist and shiver in the cold.  I wish for the boatman but he isn't coming, not this time.  Too busy.  A blast of light overhead.  Fire.  Brimstone.  I taste bile in my mouth.  My perfect hatred of fire and brimstone, of shouting and screaming, men being dragged out and thrown into the street makes me bristle with anger.

Everyone gets up.  Even I hear the call.  They all move across the misty ground, deader than doornails, towards the light.  I don't move.  Someone comes up behind me.  I don't bother looking to see who it is.

"I'm not going so leave me alone."

I feel a hand on my shoulder, a gentle squeeze that makes me start then a gauzy, sheer wisp of whiteness brushes past me.  "I'm not going," I say again as I watch those raptured souls move around me.  They are all taking deliberate steps, floating over the ground.  After a while I am alone.  Sitting in my own grave, the ground a grayish blue, the light fading in the distance.  The fire in the sky had turned to black, charred and smoking.

I get up and walk in the opposite direction towards darkness.  Though the light is fading, I'm certain I can create my own as I go along.

Pray for Shackleton*

I labored through the cold, clutching my scarf closer to my neck.  Why I ever thought that snow would be flat is anyone's guess.  I am crawling in and around sharp hills and soft valleys of deep snow.  Cold. I stood outside the Castro Theatre the other day, line wrapped around the corner, and my friends bitched endlessly about how cold it was.  They don't know cold.  And I don't know endless.  Not yet.

The sun tinged everything blue and clean.  My eyes are either in a state of white blindness or immersed in oily darkness.  Either way, I can't see clearly.  As I labor along I wonder if I've ever been able to see at all.  What have my inadequate eyes beheld?  My eyes could never be a scientific instrument, precise and objective.  The damn things don't even work on a normal basis, take too long to focus.

My breath drifts before me in milky clouds.  The tip of my nose hurts.  And my quads are screaming.  None of this matters.

I am walking away from this place and I don't look back.  Not at my previous companions, not at the place where I came from.  I'm moving forward with my blinders on, reaching out with both arms for something not in this world.  Ahead of me the orange sun, which looks so warm and restful, sits on the horizon.  The sun is the pause, the nanosecond before the nuclear explosion.

At least I will be warm again even for a few moments.

The water, all frozen (ice)bergs, stretches out around me.  I feel the ice shift as the bergs move.  Winter is here so everything should be frozen solid and there should be no danger of falling into a crack and into the watery grave of the Weddell Sea, or rather watery grave for me.  It's not a grave for the creatures that live there.  I think about this for a while.  One person's grave is another creature's heaven and home.  Perspective?  Natural History?  I don't know.

The most important part of this post is not the next paragraph.  The important part is the end.

Sometimes the only way changes are going happen is to have your goddamn heart broken.  And sometimes, sometimes nothing happens.  Your life just keeps going on with you as a speck and even with all that insignificance, your heart breaks anyway.  Sometimes you feel like you're dying from pain (and maybe the cold) but maybe that's the time you feel most alive.  Maybe that's when you feel like you have the most clarity.  In your insignificance.

Of course, there's a fine line between masochism and awareness but truly that line and the places where I regularly cross over are my business.  I chuckle as I stumble around some ice.  This little mental exercise would probably fall under the pain-lover side of things.  The ice is both soft and jagged in places.  I should pray for Shackleton but I have gone on alone and left both man and beast far behind.  I am exposed and it's getting colder.  The sun is almost gone and the deadly night will come.  If it starts to snow I am done for.

Hell, I'm already done for and I'm glad about it.

***

*On 14 July 2012, I saw the silent film "South" which is a documentary of one of my favorite true  stories, The Endurance Expedition.  I've read "South" and seen many of the photographs but had never seen the film.  Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men went on an expedition in 1914 to become the first team to cross Antarctica from one end to the other but their ship, The Endurance, got stuck in the ice and had to be abandoned.  The men, having been marooned on the ice in the middle of winter, had to work together to survive.  One of the centerpieces of the story is when Shackleton picked five men and made a 800 mile journey by sea from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island to get help.  The men used a 22 ft wooden lifeboat from The Endurance to make their voyage.  When the sea water hit the boat, it was so cold that it froze.  It took them four weeks and during the voyage, they were caught in a gale with massive waves.

"Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton."  -Attributed to Raymond Priestly.

Since I first learned about this true story, I have literally at times in my life prayed for Shackleton for the most amazing thing about this survival story is no one died.  These men were marooned in the most inhospitable environment possible and managed to stay alive.  And Shackleton, nicknamed the Boss by his men, never gave up.

Dating Life: I Posted This Ad On Craigslist...Annotated

Note: I posted this ad on craigslist last Valentines Day. It was just an experiment. I was more interested in writing the ad itself and not at all interested in meeting anybody. I got something like 20 responses, none of them viable. I took the ad down after I kept receiving responses asking what kind of drugs I was using (none). Here for your reading pleasure is the ad, annotated.

***

Un Chien Andalou (n.1) or Warm and Heavy Like Old Friendship

[Once upon a time...] (n.2)

Those ancient and old symbols quiver in the bright sunlight. We don't feel as old as we are but time keeps marching on as soldiers in formation. While the phalanx formation was appropriate for angels (n.3), time has no such poetry. It's all just straight lines and measured beats.

Speaking of poetry, how about if I do a little waxing? Of moonlight and walks on the beach? Of the stars that twinkle like shattered windshield glass on nighttime asphalt (n.4)? On seashore while we walk, ignoring the flaring bonfires of hipsters and hippies in our midst, watching cloud-like clumps of sea foam sliding across dark wet sand (n.5). Sandpipers are just barely visible running over the shore, delicate shadows. I could go on but I think what makes this evening special is the easy silence between us, your arm around my shoulders, warm and heavy like old friendship.

[Eight years later...]

This past week it's all about the films. Independent ones. I've tried cramming as many films into this week and next that I'm about to collapse from the stories and images flying around my subconscious like sugared up screech owls (n.6). Sure, I stole those words from the title cards but I couldn't resist. This post is about time after all. Time together, time marching on, the time of our lives, good times, and the time is now. Time bending and twisting like my brain did while watch nun exploitation films at 1:00 am with bad editing and worse acting (n.7).

I like to do a lot of other stuff too. Writing, obviously, though I write fiction with coherent stories most of the time. I like looking at paintings and sculptures. I like notes and beats, instruments. The usual stuff, though I'd be lying if I didn't disclose that the main reason I indulge myself in such pursuits is to fuel my imagination for more writing. Speaking of more, let's talk about that. More excellent conversation, more sexy moments, more telling you how cool you are (n.8), more fun times, more exploration of the world and each other.

Not less. I'm tired of less. The biggest form of less in my life right now is the job situation, just so you know. Other forms of less that have proved tiring: less kindness, less warmth, less understanding, less lovely connections.

[Around three in the morning...]

We are not battleships passing each other in the night firing our guns at random. When we see each other, we defy the usual norms by actually staying and talking, then asking each other our names, then explaining that we'd like to meet for coffee or a dinner. We like each other and follow through. We listen to each other and want to know more stuff about...us. At least that's the hope. A good one, wouldn't you say? For hope is not the broken down, kicked-in-the-ass bird trying to fly around on one wing that I sometimes imagine it to be. No, hope is the real deal, the enduring idea, and the sweet clenching in my chest. Hope never goes away in spite of my best efforts (n.9).

[Sixteen years ago...]

About me:
Long dark hair, eyes like the night wind
A little on the chubby side (padded)
Beautiful but in an average, non-descript way (n.10)
A solar-like smile
Short

Looking for single/divorced, educated man.

[In the Spring...]

My life is full of too many maybes and what ifs. You know what I mean. These things crowd around me like gnats with tiny bombs. The only what ifs worthy of my attention are the ones related to my stories. Time to walk out into this big world, barefoot and open. Time to take a look around. Time to see what's up. If you've made it this far in this post, I thank you for reading. If you're at all interested, please do write.

****

I've written some excellent ads on craiglist over the years but this was the weirdest one. I read a horoscope that stated I needed to keep experimenting and frolicking around in matters of love. Or rather I interpreted it as frolicking. This was one way I could think of doing just that. I have no idea if I'll get any responses but I wanted to share this strange piece of writing with you anyway. Besides, it's fucking Valentine's Day, right?

***

Footnotes
(n.1) "Un Chien Andalou" is the most famous surrealist film ever made. It was a French silent film made in 1929 and directed by Luis Bunuel. Here's a blog post I did on it.
(n.2) The comments in brackets follow the title cards in "Un Chien Andalou," hence the post title. A title card was used in silent films to set the time, note dialogue, or provide explanations. Luis used the title cards in this film to mess around with time and force people to shift their expectations of what was happening when.
(n.3) In Milton's "Paradise Lost," there's a war in Heaven and the angels use the Ancient Greek phalanx formation in their battles. If you've seen the movie "300," Gerard Butler goes into a short explanation of how it works.
(n.4) It occurred to me that this phrase "shattered windshield glass on nighttime asphalt" might be a bit too grim to include in a personal ad but I left it in because I really like it.
(n.5) I was walking on Ocean Beach by myself one night and there were these giant clumps of seafoam sliding across the dark wet sand. They looked like cumulus clouds and they were moving very steadily. I felt like a giant walking on the roof of the world.
(n.6) I was in the middle of attending the San Francisco Independent Film Festival (SF IndieFest) when I wrote this post.
(n.7) The name of this film was "Nude Nuns With Big Guns" and I really did watch at 1:00 am.
(n.8) In Miss Turtle's world, one of the biggest compliments I can give a guy is "You are so cool." The only one that's better is when I tell him he's my hero. Heroes in my life are few and far between, starting with my Dad. The guy has to be a knockout to reach that status.
(n.9) This part is painfully honest. I'm generally a cynic when it comes to matters of love but this little confession about how hope never goes away even though I try to beat the crap out of it is so true.
(n.10) I'm always brutally honest when I post dating ads but there's nothing average and non-descript about the way I look. I wrote that down because guys never seem to notice me.

Jittered, Capped, and Dead Weight

Below are three separate posts from my old blog.  When I first posted it, people told me Jittered was a strong piece of writing, the first compliment of its kind for me.  Fortunately, it wasn't the last one.  The other two posts, Capped and Dead Weight, are meant to follow Jittered.  I love all three.  Jittered accurately describes a stressful day at work where all the men found me insanely attractive for some reason.  Maybe it was because I was wearing a skirted suit.  I love Capped because it's an odd description of complete exhaustion vs. sexual longing.  Jittered might be the best written of the three but Dead Weight is my favorite, especially the end.

****

Jittered (First Posted Feb. 9, 2006)

At 7:20 am I stood outside City Hall looking for the way in. I ignored that replica Italian dome vying for my attention. The sun was warm, the sky beautiful and it was already a bad start to the day.

I walked briskly, trying to disguise the fact that I had the shakes. I was pulling a hand truck with important documents. Documents that could make or break things, but I didn't care. I still had to get into the building. Something popped in my head. Grove. Street. I walked passed a couple of guys who both said good morning. I've been looking good lately. I feel like hell, but I smile and flirt anyway. Part of the job.

I'm holding the one thing in my hand that I should not be carrying. The one thing that will make and break me: a cup of strong coffee with a little sugar. I haven't drank it yet. When I do, everything will go jittered. My thoughts will scattershot all over the place. Must wait for the right moment.

7:42 am and I'm arguing with security who keeps telling me to go to the door at the end. I try to stay calm, but that shaky inside feeling is getting worse. I finally find the right door. The sun blazes outside. The angry employees are leaving all that warm sunshine for the big dome.

I manage to make it through the metal detector without falling to pieces. The security guard chats away. I thank him and move on. Basement. Okay. Up the elevator now. The men are tripping over themselves to help me find my room. They try to talk to me as we ride up four floors. I long to ask someone what kind of wood is on the paneling, but I keep forgetting. The brain is jumping here and there. To and fro. When I get off on my floor, the men realize they forgot to press their floor number.

I make it to my room and the door is locked. I wait outside with the documents. The hallway is long and wide with gleaming white marble floors. More men in suits show up and they all smile, say good morning. One guy really likes me. He's a hyperactive little shit or maybe I'm just projecting.

I drink my coffee now. I breathe. It's the last breath of the day that will have any effect except to move the oxygen around. In about ten minutes, I can barely keep it together. The morning flies by, a blur of papers and people. I'm sitting for hours on a red velvet chair that's too small. I get cranky. I want to punch the only other chick here in the face. Bitch.

Later I'm wandering through the Controller's Office. Everyone ignores me. I smile and look around waiting for someone to ask me what the hell I'm doing there. No one does. I could steal anything from that place right now because all the employees are sitting around talking about what they watched on TV last night. There are too many exits here, too many side stairs.

Back to my velvet seat. I drank that cup of coffee as quickly as possible. I'm so wired, I can't feel sorry for myself anymore. I try to calm down, but it's not working. I'm still cranky, but I'm kicking ass. I don't know how I do it. The suit next to me keeps flirting. Giving me sideways glances. He smells good.

I wander into the hallway to make a phone call. I stare down to the main part of the building. I look up at the huge dome and then down four floors of white marble and concrete. Alarms are going off in my body, something about not falling and going splat. I'm having a perfectly ordinary conversation and then another one. Each lasts ten minutes. My voice has not started shaking, but I notice it's pitched to a slightly higher octave. Inside my head pounds and my eyeballs start to burn. Tears run down my left cheek. I manage to stop the tears and get off the phone. Now my eyes are burning so bad it feels like I've been blasted with tear gas. I stop and "drop" into the moment. It works, but now I'm in the "moment" eyeballs burning and inside shaking.

Back to my red velvet seat. I kick some more ass. I got everything. You want it now? I got it. I'm ready for ya, baby. Bring it on. I know what you want before you do.

I'm finally out of there. I have to go find a man about some equipment. I spend the next 30 minutes wandering around City Hall while he tells me I can have anything, I just have to ask him. He gives me his cell phone number. I thank him and leave. The security guard insists upon carrying my boxes for me down the front stairs.

Day is beautiful. So am I. Jittered.

Capped (First Posted Feb. 9, 2006)

Safe in my stripped down apartment, the shakes start to subside a little. I'm pushing the envelope with all the wrong combinations. The only thing that would make things more interesting is if I added some recreational drugs. No dice tonight.

I watch a very bad movie. The same message keeps showing up: "The disk is dirty." That's accurate. I have to turn it off after a few clicks of the remote. Brain overload. I need water.

I shake out my thick hair and smooth cream on my soft skin. Floss. Brush. Stretch. I have good, sensitive hands.

Almost time for bed. I'll curl up in my silky cool sheets and dream about all the things I need so badly. I want to whisper softly. I want to tumble and flourish. I couldn't even if I wanted to. The body wants much, but must drop into dreamland now.

Dead Weight (First Posted Feb. 10, 2006)

The trembly overlay stayed with me all day. At least I didn't feel like punching that bitch out. In fact, I didn't feel like punching anybody out. Progress. I had a glimpse, a murmur of what it must feel like when the gangster raps that it was a good day because no one died.

I keep drawing shivery breaths. I managed to stay off the caffeine. I went to my own funeral just now, but left because they were getting ready to put me in the ground. The box is not a good place for me; cremation is the only way to go. Heaven and Hell are two sides of the same coin, two turns in the wheel. My worst nightmare is about to come true: I'm going to be reincarnated as a creature at the bottom of the food chain. A krill, anchovy or zooplankton.

I keep telling myself I should be coming down now, but it's not happening. That's not unusual. I tell myself things all the time and the outside just ignores all my yapping. The brain bounces but then goes back to center and stays for a second. I can't hear anything anymore. A promising sign.

I sat in my car when I got home and closed my eyes. I'd found center again and wanted to stay there. So I stayed for a while. The world went dark and quiet. No dreams. No nothing.

A friend looked me over today and said I looked like I should be reporting the news. "I like it," he said. My arms are trembling a little and I don't want to think about my hands anymore. I am chagrined and sheepish. Nothing new there.

The usual confusion blasts through my head. I'm full of mysteries and cocksure of them all. Everything is complicated because I make it so. Deadweight it all. Need to channel all those stories out of my really really world and onto the page where they belong.

Then I stand up straight. I look around. The stories are overflowing. It's like the water pouring out of the dark apartment, taps turned up full. I'm so shrink wrapped that I can't even see them. I've been slogging through the water and not noticing them at all. Everything is right in front of me.

Invisible Marks, Whorls and Fleshed Ridges

Along the surface of things my fingers trail, leaving invisible marks, whorls and fleshed ridges. I used to wonder if we didn't have our five senses would things cease to exist? Is it possible that our five senses construct things to see, smell, taste, touch, hear?

Not true with others, that's for sure, but if we were alone we would never feel the things we might bump into. Without others there's no one to tell us what the world is like. The world ceases to exist and we are not around, not in any conventional space or time. Things in the world turn to misty transparencies each time we approach something: a desk, a wall, the ground. We float, suspended with not even the darkness to keep us dancing. In the end, we might turn transparent ourselves, devoid of softly padded boundaries, while the underbelly of the surface world pours through us in a riot of strange visions and clandestine energies.

****

One night while slipping in between a state between waking and sleeping, I found myself in a dark place. It was as if I'd slid under my sheet which blotted out everything. Since this was one of those rare times when I knew I was dreaming I desperately wanted to fly away into the starry, foggy night above the city but I couldn't get myself free. I tried willing myself out of that fabric of darkness but had no luck. There was a tickling in my brain, like the recent tickling I felt when I ate fresh ground black pepper in a splendid salad at a dinner party. I felt like those angels in battle who'd been unfortunate enough to be pinned under the great mountains that were thrown on top of them. I realized I wasn't going to get out of that sheeted dark place and reluctantly woke myself up.

There was no getting back to sleep after that.

***

Every once in a great while strange things happen to me that I can't explain. This has been going on since I was a child. Other than the usual obvious childhood experiences such as the times I saw God, was blessed by Jesus, and saw the shadow of Satan on my wall, other things have occurred. (I've never seen an angel, though. Oh wait, maybe I have...hmm, but I can't be sure so I'll just say I haven't.) I used to be able to choose really great books by walking along the stacks in the library and running my fingers over the spines without looking at them. When I stopped, I would pull out the book and read it. It was always amazing. I was reading all the time and it was becoming cumbersome to find really good books so I started using this method to save time. Curiously, this ability faded once I reached puberty.

One time when I was driving down Highway 101 with my ex, we saw a giant tumbleweed coming towards us on the freeway. Now if you've been on 101 you'd know there's absolutely no reason for a tumbleweed to be anywhere near there, much less a tumbleweed larger than the car. The weed bounced over the car and disappeared behind us. At first, I thought it was just my imagination but my ex mentioned he'd seen it too. I never did figure out what was going on there.

There was also that strange time I was walking to McClure's Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore with the same ex. We were walking down a short path from the parking lot to the beach and when I first saw the ocean I had to stop. Something had changed and I couldn't figure out what it was. My ex inquired as to my reason for stopping but I ignored him. I continued to stare at the crashing surf and a real panic was growing inside me. Something was terribly wrong. I realized the sound of the surf and the actual surf were off by a few moments. As soon as I figured out this sound delay I became incredibly nauseous and almost threw up. I had to look away from water and when I looked at it again everything was fine and I no longer felt sick. This feeling seemed to be tied to the place I was standing in so I spent a few minutes walking back and forth along the path but couldn't recapture that feeling again.

****

It's probably nothing but most of the clocks in my apartment don't work. My clock radio is always off by 15 minutes no matter what I do (replace battery, check the plug). The previous clock was also off by 15 minutes which prompted me to get the current one. Any clock I put in the bathroom always stops working even the clocks designed to stick to your bathroom mirror. The wall clock here in the living room doesn't work. It's always slowing down until it's off by about 20 minutes. It doesn't matter how many times I change the battery. It doesn't matter how many clocks I replace it with (the current clock is the third one I've tried; I even tried an atomic clock once). Once the current clock stopped working completely I just left it on the wall permanently set to 9:46:44. The two watches I use the most work though I've noticed all my other watches seem to have stopped working prematurely. I even took a couple to have the batteries replaced but they wouldn't start up again. The computer, phone, and tablet clocks are working well, thank goodness.

It occurs to me there's a story in here somewhere.

****

I can tell when the bus is going to come and from which direction. The bus can come from two different directions on my corner and I started out by guessing which direction as a way to pass the time. I learned quickly that if I let myself settle and stopped thinking about it, I could feel which direction the bus was coming in and whether it was coming soon, right way, or in a while. Anybody who rides MUNI knows how unpredictable the buses can be so this odd game has proven to be useful. My accuracy rate is better 90% at this point.

I've thought about attempting a similar game with lottery tickets, dice, card games, or roulette but haven't had the time to try it out.

****

Years ago, I had boyfriend where odd things seemed happen more often than usual. There were the times I checked his blog and for a moment I would see the shimmering ghost of a blog post about trains that he wouldn't post until a good two weeks later. Why that post? I'm not sure but he did mention me in it so maybe that was the reason. I'd also sent an email to a different guy before I started seeing this boyfriend where I talked about moats and inferiority complexes. It was a sarcastic reply to a mean email he'd sent me and I'd sent it to the guy before meeting this boyfriend. Later, while checking my boyfriend's blog I found an old post of his where he discusses inferiority complexes and moats in almost the sarcastic same way. There were other things but they're too weird to even post here. Needless to say because of these odd things I was convinced that we were right for each other.

That was a bad call.

(Someone is practicing scales on a tuba in an apartment on my street. It's the first time I've heard it. Seems appropriate for this post and my state of mind today.)

****

During the worst part of my divorce (the first two weeks), very strange things would happen. I kept hearing things falling and dropping in other rooms in the house. I knew these sounds were happening because the dogs would look up too. Sometimes when I went to see what had fallen I wouldn't find anything. Other times I'd find something on the floor that had no business being there. I was in a very bad state, almost suicidal, and not eating or sleeping. I realized after the first few days that I was probably imagining these things falling though the scary thought occurred to me that perhaps I was causing things to fall because of my whacked out state of mind.

I've had two concrete encounters with ghosts though I've never actually seen one. There have been other similar kinds of situations though they've been too vague to explain. All in all, I don't take these odd things very seriously. They don't happen very often (except the bus thing) and are probably explained away by something perfectly rational. Still, I do believe there are things in this world that we just don't understand and so many things are happening below the surface that I can't ignore it.

A Kind of Subatomic Musical Chairs

The days and nights flutter by like crisp $100 bills blown by wind through the concrete and steel canyons. I keep wondering where the time goes but have now realized it seeps into the pores of my skin through my blood, bones, and organs, exiting the other side. I am just a sieve, a through way for that the giant wall of water known as Time.

Stuff happens but Time is still in my own mind. This is how we can get around Time, by keeping it in our own heads. We do it in our dreams every night, don't we? My dreams are all nanoseconds and epic generations of stories. Hundreds of years go by in a single dream, my thoughts running to catch up. I grasp at those loose dark veils which trail behind, all pageantry and bridal echoes. I never see the face hidden behind the layers of black lace and sheers. When I have the opportunity, I draw away from there. I don't want to see.

The traffic of my projects zoom by me on this congested road. Everyone is going more than 80 miles an hour but they're following too close. I think a crash must be imminent but there's no rain, not even a bump in the road, to interrupt progress. Again, I'm barely able to keep up. It seems my interests have taken on a life of their own, they seem to be stretching out new muscles, but they know they have to wait for me because I'm their conduit, their channel. Nothing happens until I literally make it so. Until then it's all a massive, incoherent stew.

Unreality and reality are separated by the thin membrane which separates my internal and external selves but I know that wall is just an illusion, something the brain makes up to keep track of everything. This should scare me but it doesn't for I know everything has its place even though it would be just as happy switching positions, playing a kind of subatomic musical chairs. When you have order vs. chaos, many times the order wins. The only reason this happens is because we make it so. Order, like that thin membrane, is just a mental construct, an evolutionary survival mechanism.

I wish I could frisk like any other self-serving person but I'm too painfully aware of my limitations. I've too much narrowness in my vision of things. Too little expansion of mind. No matter how much I fill my head with neat things, it's never enough. I'm surrounded by others who dance in ritual, holding hands, inviting me into that idyllic pastel landscape. They say letting go is the best thing all around. I still doubt them.

Victims Hanging From Unfriendly Walls

Within those years, like tiny buttons marching up a woman's bare back, we carried on. Our relationship was a compartmentalized ritual, a broken shell of a box decorated for practical consumption only.

You always hated those barren, naked nights. Too cold, too raw, you said. The blankets were too slick, the bedroom too distant. You never liked sushi anyway.

We marched past expensive restaurants, never dreaming, only eating our way through and around. Everything to be consumed in one fell swoop before moving on to the next. We were like army ants decimating our tiny landscapes, marching off to war, and taking all prisoners. We struggled to hang the victims of our battles from unfriendly walls but the corpses wouldn't stay put. Instead, they floated off to the ether, calm and at peace.

You always wanted for more. And more. Insatiable lust is easy and expected, it's everything else that's difficult to manage.

You always seemed to be a wide open mouth of deadly proportions with teeth of steel and glass. You eat everything out and spit it up. You starve, you hunger. You are never satisfied. You are the monster disco dancing, longing for that white polyester suit.

We craved around everything imaginable, sucking and tasting our way through polite, educated society. We defined ourselves by our consumption. We threw it all way after using it up, or even without the using. Sometimes we just had things and then let them go. Sometimes we were loving about it but most of the time there were animals involved just to keep things interesting.

You always seemed to be a mashed up conundrum of insecurities, a screwed up scramble of leftover emotions, and burned up good intentions. I know your secrets, all of them, like how you've taken to eating the very earth, chomping at the ground in desperation. I know you have indigestion problems. I know you drink like a fish. I know all living creatures flee before you in panic.

Big Animals Take Over Transportation

It's been a bad day for transportation. The MUNI drivers left in disgust, too tired to even revolt with the Union anymore. The buffalo protested from not getting enough fresh alfalfa and blocked the underground tunnels; they hung around playing marathon Texas Hold 'Em tourneys. Giant octopi effortlessly grabbed at the ferries, holding them in place but not pulling them underwater. Traffic stopped. Pedestrians took videos of it all, carelessly posting their raw footage on Youtube.

Above the Bay Bridge, the helicopters hovered helplessly. The herds of brachiosauruses stomped their way across the newly built sections of the Bridge testing them for truth, justice, and structural soundness. The sections failed on all three accounts. Thankfully, the bridge didn't collapse, nor was it unseasonably foggy, nor were there muscly container ships trying to barrel their way past the bridge supports thinking they could pass this close without a cheeky sideswipe. It wouldn't matter anyway. If you pit Bridge/Brachiosauruses against arrogant container ships, the suspensions/dinos always win.

Out in forlorn orange, wisps of fog drifting by, our most famous landmark sat regally regarding it all. No one bothered it unless you count the annoying ant-like cars that traipse across it all day and all night long. Everyone leaves the Golden Gate alone. There are too many people with cameras hanging around. No matter how nutty this city gets we still have the royal Golden Gate to provide us with some measure of dignity.

Buses. God, the buses. What can I say? Being on the bus is so ridiculous that I don't have to invent anything weird to go along with it. BART you say? BART trains are still running on time because they're better funded and actually have a chance of arriving on time.

Eventually, the buffalo finished their tourney and went home, the MUNI drivers got back in the saddle, the octopi dropped their arms and splashed into the Bay, the dinos packed up their things and went home (to Tracy). The buses ran on, oblivious. The city went back to normal, like nothing had happened at all.

Blaze

Sometimes I dream about him but lately I sit in my small rowboat on the other side of the Milky Way, watching and waiting. During the day the stars have faded, too light to see from down there but from up here the sky is only a darker blue and the stars, milky and smeared, shine like they were just given their favorite ice cream cones to eat. Cherry Garcia, Neapolitan, Mocha Almond Fudge, Coffee, and Raspberry Sorbet melt in seductive drips down the sapphire sky.

At night it's the Blaze of Heavens. The fire and passion of millions of shimmering stars, twinkling and beckoning. Every day and night the stars remind us over and over, without tiring, of all the things we are ignoring, of all the things we are missing. The stars reach out for us. They know we need to be blinded by beauty and wonder. They're waiting for us to look up finally and see.

I imagine him in his own little boat, rowing away and minding his own business. We are not on the same paths, nor have we ever been. Still, I hope and wish for a moment when he stops rowing long enough to see me on the other side of that galaxy. I imagine he will know me and will put his oars down. I'll lean forward, reaching across those stars to him, and he will have waited long enough to know it's right time. There will be no freezing cold vacuum of space or the deadly fires of comets, just the friendly twinkling of the stars. Just the helping hand of the Universe.

We'll finally clasp hands again and everything will fall into place. We'll run along the stars' paths and the orbits of happy planets. The true Universe will come gently and truthfully into view bearing nothing but gifts and riches.

Ego-Driven Weird Note

*Note: I first wrote and posted this on FaceBook, hence the references about locations.*

It's a skewered, burnt toast of a day with only 34 minutes left. I heard the sounds of some screaming kid outside a few minutes ago but all I could think of was, rather uncharitably, isn't it way past that little guy's bedtime? I should be more compassionate but I'm held prisoner by my own self-centered love-ins so there's no helping me. Now I just embrace the fact that I'm impossibly self-absorbed, completely in love with my own words and thoughts. And the rampant ego that passes for my humanity just keeps clicking along fooling some of the people some of the time, but definitely fooling me all the time.

This must be a new phase in my life. Or maybe just a continuation of the same.

Yesterday I couldn't find my copy of "Naked Lunch" so I settled for reading the first few pages on amazon.com's "LOOK INSIDE!" feature. Burroughs always was a cheeky guy. There's never been enough New York City for him, that much is true. After reading the first few pages I amused myself by reading one star reviews of the book but that got tiring after while in much the same way staring at the bathroom faucet while waiting for it to turn itself on gets tiring.

Last night, I watched my $5.95 used version of "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence," a sequel to the groundbreaking anime film "Ghost in the Shell." I can safely say GITS 2 is the most beautiful film I've ever seen in a glittery, enameled, bejeweled way complete with semi-automatic weapons. It's also slow in parts, much to the chagrin to folks with short attention spans, but better yet to admire all that animated beauty. It's also rife with philosophical quotes, she said rubbing her hands with glee. Oh and the plot is incomprehensible too but only in the same way that "Inception" was incomprehensible. That is, a head scratcher for some movie critics but most of folks didn't seem to have a problem following the story. At least I don't think so.

Locations. Does FB now tell everyone where I'm at? I'm still trying to figure out what that's about. Normally I wouldn't be concerned but my phone is the sassy, sexy equivalent of implanting a chip inside my head so my whereabouts can be determined. (Heh. All my former co-workers: remember when I used to joke that we needed to implant location chips inside the attorneys' heads so we could find them when we needed them? No, you don't remember me saying that? I must have dreamed it.)

Far be it for me to project people's attitudes and knowledge on this poor Note. Forgive me. I have no idea if you even saw "Inception," even know what "Naked Lunch" is, and more likely, have no idea what "Ghost in the Shell" is. I should just stick to the usual, boring crap that permeates my life. Wait!...There is no boring crap in my life! How lucky is that...?!

Absolute Elsewhere

We have precisely 8.28 minutes in this Minkowski space but that's not going to include anything that happened yesterday or tomorrow. 8.28 minutes stands on its lonely own.

"Did you hear that?"

"No," he says. He is sitting on the floor looking at me. We are holding hands. He is smiling.

"Huh. I could have sworn I heard something. Oh wait. I didn't hear anything. Sorry to bother you."

He does not reply. He's already left the room and walks in as tomorrow morning is dawning cold and hard.

"Breakfast?" He is carrying pancakes, blue berries, and raspberries. I smile at him, grateful. I'm famished. I take a pancake and a berry, nibbling gently.

"Have we met before?" he asked. He was so splendid. I can hear the faint sound of a telephone ringing somewhere.

"Wait until tomorrow and I'll tell you," I say but it's too late because last night is upon us again.

"You know, I did hear something just now," he says, "What did you hear?" He cocks his head to one side.

"I haven't heard a thing. Are you trying to confuse me?"

"No, just trying to tell you I heard it, whatever 'it' is." He adjusts his glasses. He is eating a raspberry.

"Are you sure you heard something?" I asked. I'm wondering where he got the raspberry. We are sitting quietly now. I seem to have acquired blueberries from somewhere. I pop one into my mouth.

"We have two and a half minutes left," he says.

"Okay."

The sun goes down again and the moon comes up. Crickets whistle in the dark and it's warm and soft outside. I can smell gardenias.

"Can you?" I ask him.

"Oh yes," he says, "they smell beautiful. White with thick petals. Thick shiny dark green leaves."

Now we have 30 seconds left and I wonder where we're going to end up. It was such a short time but better than nothing. Time seems like a giant wave moving along at top speed at least that's how I envision it when I have to let go of someone.

I smile, "You have a good memory. Do you think you'll remember me?"

He rakes his hair with his hand. He smiles. I sit down in front of him.

"Take my hand?" We held hands, looked at each other, and waited.

*******
"Absolute elsewhere" is a term in special relativity for events that do not occur in the absolute past, present or absolute future. An event is an occurrence that can be measured in space and in time. It takes 8.28 minutes for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth. If there was a station on the Sun and it sent a message to Earth, there would be an 8.28 minute delay before Earth would receive the message. Physicists refer to this time delay as absolute elsewhere. Technically speaking anything that happens during these 8.28 light minutes is not an event because it cannot be observed and, therefore, cannot affect anything.

At least I think that's right. Feel free to contact me to correct this explanation. I set my timer to 8.28 minutes and wrote the above post. I took another couple of minutes to put the finishing touches on it.

The Earth Will Turn And Hold Out Its Secrets

His arms hurt and he can't walk. He dreams too much. He's a lost one. He stands around on broken asphalt and cracked sidewalks.

There's an old day lurking somewhere around here and it sings to him in his quiet despairing moments of non-clarity. He's always haunting those places of memories when the kitchen was down on Main Street. The days stretch like glue in his worn out eyes. He's a wonder that man with his writing mind and twitching hands. I can't stop dreaming, he says. He doesn't let himself go that way, too scary and too real.

He knows it's a gift, a friend, an apple go lucky. His heart races and his nose bleeds. It's a rough day to be a hero in the hero's days and nights. Days are flowing by in the ocean of run down time. Take a good look before it all leaves. I take all this fantasy seriously, you know.

Call down in a warm voice. The days will run on the road at all hours and the earth will turn and hold out its secrets. We are here for those rainy days. It's a bigger way up than down to you. Just don't bypass it this time and reach for what's coming. It's time.

Your Debutante Knows What You Need But I Know What You Want

It's been a week of My Listy and other efficiencies. The flushed-with-function working papers are piled up in black and white stacks just waiting to rush forward. Ideas fly around like small owls racing away from the cold dawning Sun. Bats open and close their wings in appreciation. They lean forward, teeth out, as I gently hand them their magic fruit breakfasts, juices running riot over my fingers.

It's also been a week of rollercoastering emotions. Just last week I thought I'd die or at least switch identities from the rising floods around here. Salt and waves were threatening to knock me off my lone rocky island. The tide sneaked in and surrounded me, unceremoniously. I stayed stranded (or maybe LOST) but only for 48 hours before my imaginary friend came to get me in a tiny boat with choking outboard motor, with the gasoline fumes overwhelming my olfactory sense. The rain made things more difficult but there's always a hot fireplace and welcome bathtub to crawl back to. That you can be sure of.

After the floods came the battle with the volcanoes, the roiling gray-white hot ash. The flooding hot mud. I was in the truck just ahead of the eruption's blast, my companion yelling "We CAN'T outrun the ASH!" I knew differently especially as I pushed the truck to 125 mph. It was a straight if bumpy road. We would find sanctuary soon even as I tried to unclench my teeth. The wind kicked up hot air but the truck didn't fall apart and I managed to keep myself grounded in the midst of hell's earthly appearance.

Now the volcanoes are reduced to the sometime desire to throw something against my apartment walls, but I'm willing to throw one of the dog's soft cushy toys so we know what that's about, and I'm sure you'll agree I've come far just in the past few hours.

Times sure have become a scarcity and conservative's wet dream. By conservative, I'm not talking elephants, not even the neo-con ones. I'm talking about people who don't want to rock the boat, money hangers-on is what I'm talking about. There are greenbacks to grip tightly in panicked fists and taxes to dry heave about. I'm in a good place even without employment. I believe in myself, and more importantly, I believe in the power of information and the scattering of ideas, albeit some unconventional ones.

Even with all that activity efficiency reigns in this place. Oh, and I still get to keep those desirable package deals with their swooning riffs and endless compliments. I didn't have to trade them in after all.

Hidden Abalone Under My Feet

Daily, I wander down that old road. Its gold colored bricks and sideline orchids cast a heavenly glow, but heaven it is not. I move slowly hoping for a sign or for someone to come along, but it's just me as usual.

My solitude has become familiar to me much like a pair of well-worn jeans. I think about how my time has passed and wonder what's in store for me now. Am I past my prime? Will my solitude extend into forever? No one knows.

I dream of a man who's a low-key genius, who is kind and funny. Who sits in the dark. I keep hearing more reports about him. I keep hearing that he is more wonderful than I ever dreamed he'd be. I want to tell him how I feel about him. I want him to know I feel this longing but it is too much for us, both apart and together.

Today was a once in a lifetime. A few hours that will never be duplicated or planned for ever again. They told me they were glad I was there, that they knew I wouldn't have missed it for anything. They know me well. I sloshed around with the others. Salt water splashed on my face. I felt like I would burst with gratitude all day long.

I feel marvelously happy and achingly sad tonight.

It's been a good day to think about these things.

If so I Can't Imagine Why, Part 2 of 2

"Your hair wants cutting."

"Yeah," I say, " I need to get my bangs trimmed." I'm looking out of range of this conversation. Mr. Gryphon and I are sitting on a huge rock on the beach. The White City gleams in the distance behind us.

It's a bright sunny day, a little warm, but with a breeze. Mr. Gryphon wears oversized Ray Bans.

"It's quite a lot like our original scene in the original story," I say, "All we need is Alice."

"I've been wondering when she'll be showing up. Any idea when that will happen?"

"No idea. I expect it will happen at some point. I mean, isn't our talk with her essential to what happens next?"

"Dunno," says Mr. Gryphon. The waves roll in and the sound is beautiful and soothing.

"We are very lucky to live along the seashore, Mr. Gryphon. Many people do not have ready access to the beach." He smiles, but doesn't answer. Instead, he lowers his legs and dangles his feet in the cold blue water. A flock of majestic Brown Pelicans fly by, about seven of them. They give the impression of flying slowly even though they're moving fast.

"I've figured out some important things these last few days, Mr. Gryphon. I'm beginning to see how things might be hopeful for me, for us, after all."

"Things were never unhopeful. You were just wallowing around in yourself again."

"As befits my persona on this blog," I say absently. He shifts next to me, getting a little closer. Some small, leggy shorebirds are racing back and forth with the incoming tides.

I am still looking out of range of this conversation. It seems I've made some extra room somewhere in my life. I feel light and airy. Something or someone will take its place, but I don't what that will be yet. I have a feeling it will be a good thing, though.

If so I Can't Imagine Why, Part 1 of 2

"I take it this means we'll be having more adventures. If so, I'm delighted."

"We have many adventures, Mr. Gryphon. I just don't take the time to write them down or even to articulate them to myself or to you," I say. A man shoves past me on this crowded sidewalk. Everyone seems to be in a big hurry. Mr. Gryphon glares at him, but says nothing.

The sidewalk and the huge concrete and glass buildings stretch out in all directions. Traffic is horrendous in this place. It's like New York City, but with the gloves off. Shouts and beeping horns sound everywhere.

"I was thinking earlier that I should abandon my fiction writing efforts. It's true I have lots of stories waiting to get out, but I can't seem to make any headway with the second draft of this novel I wrote," I say. Mr. Gryphon stops on the street and just stares at me. I stop a few feet in front of him. People are pushing past me. Without taking his eyes off me, Mr. Gryphon opens his wings to their full width and then extends his huge claws. The people stop and then begin to scurry around us.

"I'm only going to say one thing, Miss Turtle, and that is you haven't even given this novel writing thing a proper go at it."

I look down. I can see people's feet going past me. "I know," I mumble.

"Writing is good. I'm a huge fan of it, particularly if you're telling the stories," he says.

"Perhaps you're my best audience. Perhaps you, my imaginary friend, are right," I turn and begin to walk again. Mr. Gryphon closes his wings and retracts his claws. "Maybe I just need to take a Creative Writing course," I say.

"Now you're talking."

"Excuse me, what time does your watch say?" asks a man who has stopped in front of me.

"11:37," I say. Mr. Gryphon doesn't have a watch. The man moves on after looking at him for a moment.

"I tried talking to you while I was walking towards the Posh Bagel place this morning," I say.

"I know, I was walking behind you."

"Mr. Gryphon, why can't you be my boyfriend?"

"You ask that a lot, Miss Turtle," he says then he looks around, "Where are we going?"

"I don't know. I don't know."

A woman wearing a silver fur coat stopped me, "My diamond watch has stopped cold dead. What time is it?" Her watch was beautiful and sparkling.

"11:41."

"I'm trying to beat the clock," she says. She is pretty with a warm smile. We move on.

I sigh. "I guess this is what it's all about. All this hurrying and shoving around." We are stopped again at a huge intersection. Cars are lined up and down. We are waiting our turn to cross the street.

"At least you don't have to think past the last mile, Miss Turtle."

"It wouldn't be a bad thing to have to think only about the next step, eh Mr. Gryphon?"

"No, it wouldn't be a bad thing." I smile to myself. He reminds me someone and for last few posts I haven't been wincing so much at the reminder.

Crank: Annotated

See original post "Crank." All of these strange, cryptic posts are either based on real incidents or contain obscure references to things in my life. After writing and then reading this post several times, I decided to annotate it because it's based on the scariest event in my teenage years. I got the idea for the language from watching the film "Brick" that neo-noir hardboiled detective teenage drama. The dialog in that film is both unnatural and great.

I spent the year between ages 17 and 18 experimenting with drugs. I managed to be sensible about it, but every once in a while I would find myself in scary situations like this one. In addition to smoking a lot pot (which I consider to be as harmful as getting your martini on with your friends on a Friday night), I snorted crank (methamphetamine in powdered form) and cocaine whenever possible. I had no idea that crank and cocaine were two different substances. All I knew was that crank was cheaper and harsher to snort. One night me and a few people (two were my friends) piled into some guy's Pontiac and went to this house I'd never been to before in a neighborhood I wasn't familiar with. Our mission: to score some good coke.

The colors only got brighter with that expensive stuff. No feeling like I'd take on the world. No staying up all night. Smooth sailing, though. No choke.

Snorting coke was strange for me. True, it was expensive and more difficult to come by, but oddly enough I never really got "high" from it. It would make the colors get brighter. I felt more energetic, but I didn't get that euphoric feeling or the feeling like I could have endless amounts of sex like most of my friends did. My best friend said it made her feel like she could take on the world. I never had that feeling. Coke was super easy to snort, though. Very smooth going up the nose and no harsh after burn. That's what I mean by "smooth sailing." I did like how it made my gums numb when I rubbed leftover powder on them after the snort.

"There's a limit," said the Cutter, "You can only get so tall before it bottoms out on you."

The Cutter was a real person. A nice, older guy (maybe in his early 20s). He was at the house when we arrived. They called him "Cutter" because he was good at cutting coke into a fine powder and preparing the lines for snorting. I'd never met him before and I never saw him again after that. He told us an anecdote about Sabrina the Princess (more on her below) who snorted tons of coke in one sitting, but stopped getting high after a couple of hours. She said you can only get so high. After that, your nose, face, neck and chest start to go numb. The Cutter proclaimed it a waste of money to keep snorting after reaching that point.

Who are these people, these Parents? At the time, the most frightening thing I'd ever seen were the scales all over the dining room table. The table was so large it could have been laid out for eight or even ten. I think about parents I know now, even knew then, and I'm convinced those people are all dead and buried. Crisp hundred dollar bills fluttered around the edges of the table in a gross parody of cliche.

Ah, the Parents. The Parents were the dealers. They were real Parents and it was their house we were at. It was a nice house, two stories. Brand new. The house was full of new furniture and the Parents looked respectable enough. They looked like they could work at any good company. Maybe they did. The only difference was they had a hard, wary look about them. Their faces were worn out and slightly saggy. They were both probably in their early 30s.

The TABLE. The dining room table was big as I described. The scales were weight scales and there were piles of cocaine all over the table. The coke was being weighed in scales and bagged up by the mother. There were baggies and twist ties all over the table as well as crisp $100 bills. The sight scared the hell out of me because I knew that with this much coke there had to be some scary people lurking around the corner or in the upstairs bedrooms. My friends thought it was all so "cool" but I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Parents. Almost as lethal as the ones who fed the kids almond flavored Kool-Aid. We were lucky. They left us alone. They had blue velvet drapes hanging loose in the living room. It's 3:15 in the morning. You don't know where your children are because I'm one of them. I don't even know where I am.

I called them Parents because they had a kid (the blond with the Moe haircut-see below). He was only 13 years old and hyperactive. Apparently, the kid had been snorting coke since he was around eight years old. We were lucky the Parents just wanted our money and for us to stay out of their way. I remember nervously looking out of the living room windows. The curtains were drawn so no one would see the piles of coke on the table.

The reference to the Kool-Aid was to the powdered grape flavored drink laced with cyanide that the poor folks of The People's Temple not only drank themselves, but also fed their kids. The Jonestown massacre had created lasting, terrifying images in my mind as an impressionable middle-schooler. Cyanide, apparently, has a smell like burnt almonds. Also, just so we're clear, they did not use the name brand Kool-Aid during that tragedy. It was just a grape flavored powdered drink.

I digress.

Burning sharp, cheap. Eyes water. Some kind of lift going on up there. Nervously, I talk of elephant tranquilizers and bodies of water. It's like a bad dream. A kid with a blond Moe haircut, who has just gotten to his growth spurt, is rouncing around. Everybody wants to be his friend. Everybody wants a smooth sailing. A Parent, male, glowers at me. He's used to seeing the likes of us, so stupid and useless.

After negotiations and payment, the Cutter finally cut our coke for us. I insisted upon taking the first snort. I don't know why. I didn't know any of these people and everyone saw me as passive and meek. It was good coke: I felt a surge of energy after that snort. The elephant tranquilizers and bodies of water reference was to drug PCP or "Angel Dust" which I have never tried. There was a rumor that the drug was used to tranquilize large animals such as elephants. Also, I heard that in addition to some people experiencing rages so total that they can break the handcuffs the police have put on them, users are drawn to bodies of water, fall in and drown because they become disoriented and don't know which way is up.

The kid with the Moe haircut had a lots of friends because his parents were dealers. If you had drugs or access to them, everyone wanted to be your best friend. It's a user kind of culture.

A friend, one of the few I'm with, produces a Jay. I'm running wired and it's close to dawn now. I have to run down soon. Before we leave in a 70s crowded car, I catch a glimpse of Sabrina the Princess, her long dark hair and youth is waning at the tender age of 14. She's dead. It's only a matter of time. The Cutter glances over at her and shakes his head. It's a lost cause. Her big dark eyes see none of it.

A Jay is a joint. Since I had snorted good coke I was feeling pretty energetic. On the way home, my friends told me to take a few puffs to come down a little, so I did. Sabrina, the 14 year old, was also the daughter of Parents (different ones) who were dealers. She had a hard look about her and was obsessed about maintaining her high for as long as possible. When I say that she's dead, I'm not kidding. That girl, with her big dark dilated pupils and an unnatural hardness about her skin was completely lost to the world. The only place to go from there is to the harder drugs then to overdose.

Thankfully, I move on from all that. Thankfully, I only went with them to see the Parents and the Cutter once, my nerves having failed me. My best friend said I was unbrave, but at least I didn't make up imaginary boyfriends and tell elaborate tales about them.

I never went with my friends to look for coke again. I was too scared. I was a wimp. I used to think that these were undesirable traits, but now I can see they saved me because the fear was far more powerful that the pressure to conform to what my friends wanted me to do. My best friend at the time was a drama queen and always looking for attention. She did make up a boyfriend who was obsessed with her. He lived in a mansion in Hillsborough and drove a Porche. Their relationship was seriously screwed up, even in an imaginary way.

The Tylenol stopped her short. And I was luckier than Hell for it. I didn't want to see those scales on the family dining room table ever again.

A little while later, my best friend attempted suicide by taking a whole bottle of Tylenol (this was before the Tylenol scare where they pulled every bottle from the shelves in every store). I drifted apart from her after that and soon thereafter stopped my experimentation with drugs. I was very luck to have made that break

Crank

The colors only got brighter with that expensive stuff. No feeling like I'd take on the world. No staying up all night. Smooth sailing, though. No choke.

"There's a limit," said the Cutter, "You can only get so tall before it bottoms out on you."

Who are these people, these Parents? At the time, the most frightening thing I'd ever seen were the scales all over the dining room table. The table was so large it could have been laid out for eight or even ten. I think about parents I know now, even knew then, and I'm convinced those people are all dead and buried. Crisp hundred dollar bills fluttered around the edges of the table in a gross parody of cliche.

Parents. Almost as lethal as the ones who fed the kids almond flavored Kool-Aid. We were lucky. They left us alone. They had blue velvet drapes hanging loose in the living room. It's 3:15 in the morning. You don't know where your children are because I'm one of them. I don't even know where I am.

I digress.

Burning sharp, cheap. Eyes water. Some kind of lift going on up there. Nervously, I talk of elephant tranquilizers and bodies of water. It's like a bad dream. A kid with a blond Moe haircut, who has just gotten to his growth spurt, is rouncing around. Everybody wants to be his friend. Everybody wants a smooth sailing. A Parent, male, glowers at me. He's used to seeing the likes of us, so stupid and useless.

A friend, one of the few I'm with, produces a Jay. I'm running wired and it's close to dawn now. I have to run down soon. Before we leave in a 70s crowded car, I catch a glimpse of Sabrina the Princess, her long dark hair and youth is waning at the tender age of 14. She's dead. It's only a matter of time. The Cutter glances over at her and shakes his head. It's a lost cause. Her big dark eyes see none of it.

Thankfully, I move on from all that. Thankfully, I only went with them to see the Parents and the Cutter once, my nerves having failed me. My best friend said I was unbrave, but at least I didn't make up imaginary boyfriends and tell elaborate tales about them.

The Tylenol stopped her short. And I was luckier than Hell for it. I didn't want to see those scales on the family dining room table ever again.

Cryptic

"I believe you are in a better mood, Miss Turtle."

Mr. Gryphon is sitting on top of a high stone wall. I am leaning against the wall almost directly below him. The sky is bright blue with cottony white clouds. We are taking a break.

"It would seem so even with today's disturbing announcements," I say, "I read online that I'm just a little pipsqueak who can't possibly know the grand scheme of things so why worry? The article also said things never go the way you want them to because they can't. Things are simply the way they are. They aren't supposed to fit with your expectations."

"It is what it is." Mr. Gryphon echoes as he shades his eyes with his hand and looks around from his high perch.

I look up at him now and smile. He reminds me of the person whom he was originally supposed to represent. He seems to sense this, maybe, because he looks down at me and grins. We look at each other for a long time.

"Just get in the water and float," he says. We burst out laughing, then he goes back to looking around. A yellow meadowlark alights next to him on the wall and looks at him curiously before flying off again.

"Are you sure you want to continue as we are? I can fly us out of here in time to be home for dinner, " he says.

"Yes, I'm sure. I have cheese snacks here in my book bag in case we get hungry. Besides, aren't you having fun?"

"Sure, I'm having fun, but you've been in a dark state as of late."

"True, true." I can't deny this fact. My state has been so dark that I've actually been relishing a twisted exaggeration of it.

We are in a giant stone maze and have been for the last couple of days. I insisted upon this little adventure since finishing the last Harry Potter book. Mr. Gryphon hops down from the wall.

"I thought you liked hedge mazes best, Miss Turtle," he says as he fully opens his wings and stretches. His huge claws temporarily expand to their full intimidating length before retracting again.

"I do like hedge mazes, but I couldn't resist seeing you up on that wall. And don't tell me the way out, just point us in the general direction," I say. We start on our path again.

"I should talk to you more often, Mr. Gryphon, you know like in real life. Perhaps when I'm about to fall asleep."

"You do talk to me. Most of the time you're asking me questions about why this happened or what does that mean," he says. There is a pleasant breeze. The warm breeze and sunshine is a welcome change from the low, dripping fog in my real-life neighborhood.

"Must get tiresome," I say. He shrugs and we go round a bend in the maze. He reminds me of someone else and I burst out laughing again.

"What?" he says, but he knows anyway. He produces a paper airplane and flies it at me. It swoops around magically before I catch it. It says "Open Me."

I open the small airplane, read the message and laugh some more.

"I'm safe, Mr. Gryphon. And the reason why I'm safe is the person who might have an inkling about what's going on with the paper airplanes doesn't even know this blog exists. And even if he did, he still wouldn't know what to make of it all. So I'm safe."

"This post is far too cryptic, Miss Turtle. It's a disservice to whoever is reading it."

"Oh well. I guess I can afford to be a little cryptic now and then." We encounter a fork in the maze and I look left and right. I take aim and send the paper airplane off. It goes to the left. I pick it up and we move to the right fork. We round another bend and stop.

In front of us is the center of the maze, all lush green grass and hundreds of rose bushes all in bloom. The air is a riot of fragrance and color. We move forward slowly, taking it all in. Mr. Gryphon reaches out and plucks a snowy white rose and hands it to me.

"For your cryptic ways, Miss Turtle. And I might add that it would be fun to share some of your mysteries. There's plenty of roses to go around."

"I suppose you're right, Sir." Butterflies of all kinds are sailing by us in windy abandon. There's a luxuriously ornate white marble fountain with Posidon and his chariot, complete with diving dolphins, water nymphs, and flying fish in the center of the rose bushes. The water is not running now (to keep from harming the butterflies). We find a green painted iron bench on at the far side of the fountain and sit down.

"Things are never as bad as they seem especially if you focus on the good instead of the bad," muses Mr. Gryphon.

"Such as the paper airplanes?" I ask him.

"Well, they got us here, didn't they?" I smile at him. He produces a cold bottle of water, opens it and hands it to me. The butterflies seem to be flying around us in a bright dance, but that could just be my imagination.