An Urge for its Day

One day he watched it all melt away. He knew what was happening and he did not try to stop it. First his bed went. It started up in flames, which burned themselves through until a sort of liquid plastic eased up to the surface. It kept deflating. He patted it once in the middle to see what it felt like. It felt like plastic. Nothing like his sleeping pad he'd spent the last nine years on.

Next went all the gifts his mother had given him. These he watched more carefully. All the stuffed toys he was not ashamed to bring along into adulthood. Of course he cared. He saw his mother in them and saw the care she'd taken to choose them. He imagined her in the store, requesting the bunny with rainbow striped eggs sewn into its feet, floppy ears on its head, from its perch about one and one half persons high into the air. All along she wondered how he would hold it, if he would like it. Was it what she wanted for him? She held it by its ears, spun it around and thought it would fit just fine into the next care package sent. She especially liked its big, brown eyes that reminded her of his. He did not want to watch this one leave. But he had to. He swore to never look away from the pain, never to back down from fulfilling what was being asked of him in any moment. The bunny split, as if rent in two, right between the eyes. One half fell, turning to mist before reaching the floor, the the other half stayed merely flat on his desk, big brown eye still taking in the world.

Pictures of his family he could not see go. Unfinished business was left. Touching them, hoping to spare them of a boiling, mysterious heat, his finger was burned, singed off the top. It is not right for this to be gone! Hand held up, the picture breathing flame, he took his fist and plunged it straight into the frame. The flame bellowed its thanks and burned through his whole hand, past the wrist. Exorcising rage and pain all across the room, he made dents where he could, and tossed other things on the fire. Those books of his, the music, the shelves, the journals, the thoughts, the memories, the embarrassments, the times as they were.

On the edge of it all he sat and watched. And wondered what to do next.

Her walk walks like her walker.

Heather spent the last several months in wild seclusion building whatever she could from thoughts and feelings. She swore to use nothing real, as what is real is already there and does not need highlighting. She spent most of the time not knowing what to do. She felt continually frustrated and shut out from whatever it is that can be termed reality. From her own self she begged and pleaded for answers, but what could come in frustration but the slow dance of static and building tension. Over and over she dropped her current approach and did something different. Anything different. Heather stopped the fostering of frustration and stepped back, allowed the pot to cool and look at things differently. Not make such a rush of things. If the present conundrum stopped being of paramount importance to solve, she found that she could be patient, let life roll on in a different way.

Prophets and storytellers could promote their answer and predictions, but little did she gain that was lasting from these. For these things came from outside of herself, and while they may have been startlingly accurate and open the heart of things, they were born of someone else's moment, not her own. Answers from another may provide a kind of support, but if they are not born from within, how can they truly steady her legs? Help from another provides a different perspective, but let it be known that what is counting breaths and feeding hints and impulses comes from within.

The race with others is a race short lived. Continually Heather found herself drawn away from others, away from their crowd and their noises and their organized lives. What became her life really had very little to do with groups and herds of people.

Attention. Please direct your attention to the following items: Yourself. The world. Your neighbor. That dog. Your brilliance. An automobile capable of sensing the rain. An hour of wretched solitude. The moment of waking. A fear worth its telling. A pattern broken forever. A chair with three legs. Pillows for comfort. The gears within, turning, propelling.

Heather had to weed out many ideas, many influences to get back to her own. Such was her life among others. Everything has an influence, a hidden grasp. A dropped opinion is a new opportunity for fresh thinking. A growth spurt will come here and there.

She found things so delightfully, playfully elusive. If the dropped hints ever became rages of warning, she would be ready. For she had tuned her ears to hear.

If she cries and you hear her wail, please do not misunderstand. It is simply the passing of something no longer needed.

She is a cloud surfer. A daytime wanderer. A rhapsodic riddler. An emissary from parts without parts.

It must never end

Pigfoot Brennan found himself walking one day. He started one way, and then quickly took the other. People all along the way. On his path, to his side, children at the front, and cyclists at the back. One boy he found to be uniquely interested in the back of a bag of chips. A young girl seemed to be falling in love with the scent of a white rose; one she would never wish to cut, but one she deeply wished to possess.

Generated Content

With far greater precision and far less aiming we do stab at the moment to create something. See the target, aim at it with a subtle necessity and let loose the arrow. The target does not always need to be hit. Imagine the wonderful mistakes that cause a bit of a jumble of things that bring about such a happy, unexpected result!

Imagine the amount of things left to say and do, and those things we will leave behind, never to speak of, act on, do again!

Do, what is in the range of your individual self to do, in the moment. And allow for the unthinkable to occur.

Speak, and in your own way, please speak.

Amounting to a Penny Apiece

And all that you have seen, and all that you have heard, let that speak through you. Let yourself be the mouthpiece for the overflow of your experiences. They will unite themselves inside you and come pouring out in whatever your profession, social and private life may be. If we let them.

While you're busy deciding whether or not to look at your feet, I'm standing up!

The king stood at the perfect vantage point in his castle, from which he could view his entire domain. And he sighed. Slumped forward a bit.

"If I may, your Highness," soothed his manservant Heath.

"If you do, then I thank you for it," King Grabbardly said.

Heath walked a half circle to the other side of King Grabbardly's throne and softened one of his shoulders back into a more royal posture. Grabbardly maintained it for a moment, and then let it drop.

"I'm afraid I have no desire for kingly attitudes this day, Heath. I should like to be alone."

"Then your people will send forth their wishes for your renewed spirit."

"Will they? But I haven't given anything from myself in years. A bit of benign guidance, but not a lot. Certainly not a great deal."

"Your Highness, your people have cultivated much under your watch. They will not let their king be laid aside by melancholy."

"Then I have become the subject, and they have become something of a teacher."

And Grabbardly pondered. It wasn't long before he threw his robe to his manservant and took a stark naked run through the town. He returned, still naked, but clutching three squirming, struggling, screaming chicken and one baby ferret.

"I've named them all after you, my dear friend Heath!"

Because that's what Kings can do!

For an instant it made all the difference in the world.

"Please, sir, do please square your underwear the other way, in honor of the manner in which His Majesty generously squares his. "

The officer looked bored.

"I do not understand why."

"It is merely tradition. You are found lacking in Tradition 41187961: heading: Squaring Underpants in the Method Used by His Royal Highness."

"Explicate the reasoning behind this. I am a simple man, but a man with the distinction of doing things my own way, the least of which is the way I square my drawers, and I do it in the fashion I do because it is of optimal comfort."

"I shall not. You have been warned. I am tempted to stand here and wait while you comply."

"Then I shall leave."

"Then I shall have to force pleasant compliance from you!"

The struggle was monstrous, the area of devastation was enormous. One man fought so hard to preserve his belief...just as the other did. In the end, the simple man's underwear was no closer to being righted than it was at the start. Only now, there is an overabundance of chaos at Number 5 Openly Road between Berry's Tea Tree and Lonsury's Cattle Branding.

The right to underwear expression and its effect on our composure is being openly debated in court. I should like to see which officials deviate from His Highness' preferred unmentionable wrangling.

That would be interesting for at least half an instant.