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.



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

Night after Night

Night after night I sit here and watch her dance.

Sometimes the air gets so hot I can't breathe but I don't care.  I don't come down.
 Not anymore.

The girls, they come up and bring me whiskey.  Plenty of it.

There's my friend Lucky.  He always leans, even when he's drunk.

I can't stand the way some of these girl's are dressin'!

But I love to see her sitting and looking in the mirror.

To be invited up.....that is a big deal.  Means she likes you.

You could just bust in but.... I don't like to treat her that way.

Some nights I just prefer to watch.  From afar. Especially so she can't tell I'm watchin'.

If she knows you're interested, she'll take you for all you've got.

Stay back!  You want her to see me?

You dog!

 Well when I die, they'll be takin' me to the graveyard in Doc Sweeny's Black Moriah!

Believe it or don't.

I still feel a little funny having buried Old Chuck yesterday.

Was that his wife dancing tonight?

Lord, it's hot up here.

I won't go upstairs tonight.

Ever since that bad night/day and night with Apache May, I really haven't been the same.  

The same person I mean.

Who would be?

Christ.

I guess I feel better sleeping outside.

Good night.

a New Adventure! part 1

It was thursday and the gang was antsy.  
What haven't we done yet?  We've seen it all.
ho hum.
Yeah, life was starting to feel predictable and grey.
That's why when the Mystery of the Cave came up,everyone got really excited.
"Whaddya mean mystery?"


It turns out that you know that cave down by the river? Its kind of a hollow that the river carved in the clay bank.

                                                                                             Ok so it's not even a cave, its a hollow                                                     allright, call it a "hollow".  

Well the other day, a boat showed up there. 

 Stay with me.  A boat showed up there and there were some...things in it. 

 Strange random, antique-y kind of things.  Mrs. Jonesy stepped out of the  crowd first and tugged it up onto shore, trying to investigate it and almost broke her back doing it.  She started handling everything that was in that boat, kind of cringing while she did but still grabbing things almost like she had to.
The boat?  a painted rowboat, that's all.  Let me finish about Mrs. Jonesy!
So she was touching stuff like crazy, picking it up and throwing it down practically, leaning so far into the boat that we could barely see her as she dipped.  It was creeeepy.  Some of us kind of yelled out "stop" and "settle down Mrs." but no one stepped forward to help her.  No one wanted to touch her.  Finally her little boy ran out to her and got her away, sobbing.  She was sobbing and sobbing.
So we got a branch out of the forest and pushed the boat back over the bank into the "hollow".  Wanna see it? It's probably still there.

no one moved.
"scary stuff in a painted boat?"

end of part 1

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?

The Windy Day

The crows are flying to their meeting place again. 

 They used to meet in a tree across the street.

I'm not kidding,  a thousand crows would congregate and caw and err at each other. 

It was great!

I don't know what they were saying.

So now they've moved the meetings, but

      maybe it's just a seasonal change?

Maybe they'll change back.

I think there was something wrong with the tree across the street.

It just didn't suit their purpose anymore, I guess.

I think it has to do with the electricity from the telephone wires.  

It might be leaking out and messing with the crow's flight navigation.  

What if they mean to go the old meeting place but they're just so messed up 

(navigationally challenged)

 that they end up somewhere different than where they intended to be?

There they go, there's the last of them.
Flying V's.

I wish someone could tell me where they moved it to.

the Dream

  

I had a dream that I was standing in front of people while I was naked.  They were looking at me critically, as if I were composed of separate parts; lights and darks, shadows, highlights. I felt as elegant as a queen and as important as a delicious piece of meat.  They scrawled shapes and lines meant to designate me on books of paper.  They were intent in their purpose.
Sometimes they scowled at me, but I didn't really mind at all.  "I can only do the best I can do with this body that is just like any body why don't YOU get up here then" I scream, maybe  No one reacts as if I said anything at all so ....maybe I didn't.




I start rehearsing my Phebe monologue to the captive audience:


Know'st thou the youth that spoke to me erewhile?
Think not I love him! tho I ask for him
Tis but a peevish boy

and as I blink I'm somewhere else, (damn, still naked).  There is a STUFFED RACCOON sitting at my feet.  I am a little chilly here but the music is good.  Same engrossed faces, I feel like I have to hold absolutely still.   Soon I get bored with this task and begin to work on my Portia monologue quietly:

The quality of mercy is not strained;
it droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven
upon the place beneath


I shiver and suddenly,

Oh god will this dream never stop?? I'm somewhere else but I'm wearing chain mail over my bare skin and it is killing me, I mean it really hurts!

 so i begin yelling my Cleopatra monologue:

Sir I'll eat no meat
I'll not drink sir.
If idle talk at once be necessary
I'll not speak neither
this mortal house I'll ruin
do Caesar what he can


and then-

No one is there.  Weird.  And I'm now standing barefoot on the floor and looking out over a giant empty hall.  Is that a pipe organ above the clock?  I think I see someone sitting at the other end, but I'm not sure.  All of a sudden, I'm cold and embarrassed.  There is a wind blowing through the space.





And then I woke up! I felt as if I had been working all night instead of sleeping.  My back hurt and my skin felt weird, it made me think of that chain mail.
I thought about that empty hall again with the strange
yellow patterns on the floor.




                     We are such stuff
as dreams are made on; and our little life
 is rounded with a sleep   -Prospero from The Tempest

the Television

The T.V. is always on, I make sure of that.  I like it best when it's  playing some really inane noise, such as sounds of people that I can't really decipher into words.  The  babble is reassuring.  My T.V. is like a many faceted electronic human caught in a  friendly box shape just for me.  Sounds like friendly friends in the next room.   I always have it playing (it's "playing"!),  just to keep that comforting layer of sound buffering my reality. 

 As I stare transfixed I wonder that  this squawking box should give me any kind of comfort.  It doesn't respond to me, unless it's just to shut up when I mute it or to go away when I end it's life.   It tells me things I don't want to hear, like I need more moisturizer and less hair here, more BETTER hair there.  It tells me everyone is better/happier more successful than I will ever be.   It tries to scare me with vicious reports about bad people (like me) doing bad things (to me).  

Maybe this thing is not my friend at all, it doesn't care about comforting me.  Maybe it's more of a monster crouching in the corner ready to devour my soul the minute I willingly bring it into life!

But look at my T.V.,  it's sitting there, silent and grey, ready, waiting..... It wants me, I can tell.  I can't stand the patient waiting that that electronic picture box is doing,  nonchalantly sitting there expecting   me to acknowledge it,  just waiting for my desire to hear it's voice peak and then I will have no choice...  It is slowly drawing me to it with it's revelatory potential.
 How will it posses me today?

Soon I will break down, I will press the button, I will free the demon.   It will control me again and I will become it's adoring slave.