Slippin' Away

Going to be away from the blog-o-sphere for a while. Look for a new post December 3rd. Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving.

In the mean time I offer this contemplation:

Find at least one thing to be thankful for each day - anything: a sunrise, the discovery that you didn't lose your eyeglasses after all, a new book by a favorite author, your favorite food on sale in the grocery store, a phone call from a friend.  You'll soon have a basket full of happy to brighten any day.

Journey's End

Rousted from restless sleep by the screech of a dying animal he stumbled from his tent. The heavy clouds of the gray morning pressed down with a weight that made him hunch beneath the blanket draped over his shoulders.

Picking up the stout branch he had used as a walking stick the day before he poked the embers of the previous night's fire into a pile. Going down on hands and knees he breathed new life into the coals. The nuggets glowed an orange red and in their seams he saw the path he must travel.

The end of his journey was near. Before this day was ended he would be either the first survivor or the latest victim of the evil that had laid waste to this land.

Crow Gossip

They came in a fury. A hundred black crows beating the air with two hundred black wings. The sound was like twenty freshly laundered sheets pinned to a clothes line and flapping in the wind.

The crows settled in the top of a towering tree, bobbing on the tip of every available branch.

Then the racket started. Crows squawking at one another, from one branch to another, drowning out every other sound of the day. It was like being in a gymnasium just before a basketball game where the kids at the top of the bleachers are shouting to their friends at the bottom of the bleachers.

They continued for fifteen minutes, chattering excitedly with all of the latest crow gossip. A hundred crows carry a lot of news.

Then they were gone, flapping wings and rising from the tree in a single black swarm.

And quiet returned to the day.

Veteran Prayers

Imagine the pain of losing a loved one unexpectedly.

Imagine the stress of living every day knowing a loved one might never be seen again.

On Veteran's day, beyond being grateful for those who serve and have served, offer up a prayer for their families.

Tires and Parts

It was the eight tires lying on their side in the middle of the fallow field that caught my attention.  I traveled this stretch of road on a daily basis and, unless the property had changed hands overnight, there was no junk yard there.

Yet a junk yard is just what it appeared to be when I spotted the piles of metal spread across the field.

Then I realized the farm's irrigation system had been dismantled. The metal was actually carefully organized piles of steel struts and six inch pipe - like a giant erector set waiting to be returned to the box.

Driving Home

Headlights on high beam, defroster on high, radio set even higher to be audible over the defroster, and windshield wipers racing back and forth to keep the view ahead clear.

Rain hits the windshield in hard, fat, drops that explode like miniature water balloons.  Wait. What was that? Could it be? Surely not!

It was - a snowflake the size of campaign button hat just the windshield.  Followed by another and then another. Until the windshield wipers were leaving watery streaks rather than clear glass behind.

Night pressed in closer of the side windows as the view head tuned into a endless tunnel of white.

Wishing I had thrown a scarf into the car, I thought ahead to bowls of hot soup and logs burning in the fireplace.

Pinwheels

Winds swept dried colored leaves from the ground and shook fresh leaves from tree branches. A collage of reds, yellows, and oranges swirled, tumbled, and spiraled through the air - and I realized the leaves of post-summer are the original pinwheels.

Wandering A City

In the cool light of false dawn, the cemetery reminded him of a city. Towering monuments glimmered above cracked and aging tombstones just as glass-walled skyscrapers rise above block after block of run down neighborhoods.

Further considering this revelation, the morning wanderer realized that the cemetery's inhabitants also mirrored the inhabitants of any thriving city. Beneath the cold earth and concrete slabs lay carpenters, office workers, mothers, nurses, grandparents, truck drivers, and infants.

One day he too would be part of such a city. He wondered how he would be remembered - as the entrepreneur he had once been of the vagrant he had become. He decided he preferred vagrant. Wanderers such as he had become tended to live on in poetry and stories. Perhaps he would find eternity in a ballad.

Time Change

The good thing about the return to standard time is...

Ah, well, there's always....

That is to say....

Oh yeah,  the return to standard time now will help me appreciate the return to daylight savings time in March.

There, I knew there had to be something good about the changing of the clocks.

Okay, so there's also the benefit of  heading off to work in daylight. Problem is, that benefit is not only short lived but offset by having to drive home in the dark.

Arriving home after sunset leaves me feeling the day has been lost and that I should just skip dinner, have a hot totti, and fall into bed.

Now if I were a bear... I could be looking forward to safe and restful sleep, sleep, sleep.

Sratching It Out

I look at all the different fonts used in printing, typing, and data processing and marvel to think that many of them were born under the tip of a quill scratching across parchment.

That a single tome could span more than one calligrapher's life in creation is incomprehensible.

What would it be like to start a book knowing at the outset you would never see its end?