I'm Right Here

You never know I'm there.

Do you?
That's ok, I'm not mad!

I think sometimes you might sense me, if I 

(accidentally or maybe on purpose) 

brush to close to you.

 You have the greatest little habit of looking quickly to the side as if you'd seen something.

I love watching you do that.

But I don't think you know it's me.





We've been together for years now!  I know you so well!
But you never know it's me.



I don't want to scare you -

Occasionally, I have to admit,  I get this overwhelming desire to reach out and touch your arm as you're stepping into the shower, just throw you the tiniest bit off balance, just to see how you'll react.
Wouldn't that be funny!


No don't worry, I won't do that.  Mostly because I'm not allowed to!

(I don't like trouble.)

We live in different worlds you and I

Let me tell you there are a lot of rules where I live.

Here are some:

No Touching

 No Speaking Unless Thru Electronic Devices

 No Frequent Moving of Objects

Some ghosts are luckier, they get to make as much noise as they want.
But I don't want to just haunt, I want to....
....have coffee or a drink with you, share a napkin,
 go to a museum and look at the pictures and ooo and ahhh and complain and admire.
I know that you do these things, I've seen you.
And I was there, but....not really.

I remember the difference!

Oh well, I still enjoy being with you.
Maybe you can see me, a little to the side.

LOOK!



I'm right here.








******************************************************

The Boy in the Wood

Don't look too closely.

Things fit together too well when you
correlate so closely.
 "Coincidences" will tend to
pop up and
events that seemed completely
disparate
 begin to make so much
horrifying linking sense.

The Veil is lifting.
********************************************************

I remember when I told mama and papa about the boy in the wood.

They really didn't want to hear, so I tried to speak louder.

He always sat on the stump right by my trail,
 I whined.
He just stares at me and doesn't move and
doesn't say a word.
He makes me feel funny.




It's a free wood, they replied, smiling behind their faces.

I know, said mama, make friends with him!
What?
He's a lonely little boy.
I've seen him, papa added.




But he's got a knife.
So? they replied. Try harder.
He looks at me strange.
Don't be conceited.
He looks at me mean.

What would Jesus do? Go watch t.v.

I spent the rest of the summer, afraid to go out, afraid I'd see him, over there with his knife and I'd have to walk right across the grass and go right up to him and stick my hand out and say:

 Hello, will you be my friend?

Finally I just had to use my wood path to visit those faerie friends who lived deep in the forest.

I wondered if he would be there.

I thought about him as I peed.

To get to the trail, I had to pass that sour smelling, flowering bush-tree.  It hid the trail from our house.

 I saw the stump.

He was there!

 I spied him carving foreign designs into the stump between his legs.  

He hadn't yet seen me, so intent on his work;  head bowed, dirty clothes.

I approached with stealth.

Finally I was close enough to smell him.                                                     Oranges.  Sweet.

I very very carefully sat back in the weeds on my heels and watched him work.

It was peaceful and violent and I wondered if he would carve the wood down into the ground.

A breeze came up and I saw him sit up straighter.

He turned.

He saw me.

For years we stared into each other's eyes.

And then he was gone, into the woods, away away.

But I want to be your friend! I screamed after him.

The stump.  The stump.

I ran to look at his carving, his hacking, it will tell me All!

I saw a heart.  His heart,

my heart gashed and gouged there, in that wood.

He had made this for me to find.

A message, a token of his friendship!

After I got the bright idea of getting the burlap bag to pull it on, the stump became much easier to move.

I keep it with me even now.

No, no,  I never saw him again.

See, the stump, it's right behind that table.

You can look at it if you want.

I don't have to see it all the time,

but I like to know that it's there.

Things fit together too well when you

correlate too closely.

 "Coincidences" will tend to

pop up and 

events that seemed completely

disparate

 begin to make so much

sense.

Don't look too close.



******************************************************

Our Home

I

remember having lunch out on the porch when it was summertime and so hot

you

could barely breathe in the stuffy rooms of our childhood home.

Mother would be waiting at home to make lunch, remember? 

Sometimes she even managed to greet us with a smile, posing prettily by the marble fireplace in the basement.

I think I hated school even then:  a holding pen for the maladjusted and the unlearnables.

At least our school was.

Mr. Marston used to throw his baton at our heads when he was angry, remember that??

What an asshole.  

I learned a lot from him.

I was always so sure that it would be ME 

that got out, I would be the one who made it far and 

wide and only looked back

with a crooked grin,

what a sick joke to be the one left to 

tend this pitiful hearth.

Yes I used to stand by my chair for hours!

Uncle Rog never let us sit before him.

I made the best whiskey and soda, he said!

I liked sitting on his lap by the fire.

I wonder if Aunt M. ever sat on Uncle Rog?  Everyone said she loved herself best.

She "never had a chance", I never knew what that meant.

In life? In love?

      

And the legends surrounding that bear skin rug! Outrageous weren't they?

I had  to give that thing a wide berth when I went nightly to the wood shed, let me tell you!

Did you ever look into it's eyes?

Some days Auntie M. never left the davenport at all.
 Just sat and stared.  In her prettiest dresses.
 Listening

to the sound of the ivy attaching itself to the chimney.













**********************************************************************************

the Party

It all started in the usual way - alcohol, cigarettes, friends.  Gathering friends, hanging out.
      "I'm gonna get Fucked Up!"

And here are the drugs.  The last inhibitions float away, the party reaches for new heights. Oh, how much fun can we have?!









Experimentation.  Excess.  Ecstasy.

Invisibly the tone changes.  The friendliness dissipates into clouds of smelly, intoxicating smoke.


     "What do they want from me?"









Ensnare.  Excitable.  Evoke.

                                 The pitch climbs ever upward. 

 To heights seen and unseen.

  Acknowledgement is futile, how 

could you ever stop this train.  

Who has the straw/bill/pipe/light/etc.?  

  Personalities dissolve, faceless fun.

"Who are you again? Altho I don't really care! 

I just wanted to.."

Encircle.  Explosion.  Eruption.

Things happen so fast, sometimes you don't realize until it's over that something out of the ordinary has actually occurred.  No one intended it to happen.  That's not the point!  

Now we'll remember it with a hazy horror for the rest of our lives.

Eyeless.  Elusive.   Endless.




*thanks to Timmi Mikkel Harrop for the inspiration for "the Party" and for the "murder" pictures

Behold Ladies & Gentlemen!


the Circle.





Quite possibly our most potent and oft
encountered symbol, the circle is found
everywhere, created by us but also magically
appearing out there on it's own in the big bad world.
 We live in the center of this symbol
and also cling to its edges.

It is the beginning and the end without a beginning or an end.   It is the past, the present and the future occurring  simultaneously.  It is everything that has happened to you and everything that will happen to you.  Looking through it you can see farther and into other worlds.

We live in the seasons; 

they always change and then come around again. 

 It's almost spring again!

Our days turns into nights, into days, into nights..

Oh look it's

sundaymondaytuesdaywednesdaythursdayfridaysaturdaysunday

 again......

I just noticed it's 7:50 just like it was last night, just like it was this morning!  This is a meaningful
realization...







And since this circle never goes away, never breaks apart, can we assume that our cycles are all still here, happening over and over again?