Nature Does Not Keep Business Hours

Last night my sleep was torn apart by a bright light that came through my closed eyelids and a cracking rumble that finished the demolition of my slumbers. But, that was it, just the one burst and the hissing rattle of rain on the plastic deck awning. l looked at clock. The glowing red numbers showed that the time was 1:57.  I was thinking  why can’t weather keep more  businesslike hours, especially the loud disturbing manifestations. Unfortunately weather has no job to go to early in the morning and so can rage about all night with no consequences to itself, only to those of us of the human variety.

After a while I drifted back into sleep and into an old dream of a house made like a cave in the middle of a gigantic tree with shelves and furniture carved out of the wood of the tree. I was arranging some objects, a piece of driftwood, bear carved out of wood and some other things I can’t recall, on a counter that was connected at the bottom to the tree cave house. Suddenly a wind like a petulant hand came up knocking my arrangement into disorder. I set it up again, but the wind grew into a wall pushing me away from the the counter I was decorating. When it was done I was standing 5 feet away and the counter was empty. I had no idea where my things went. I knew what I had to do at that moment. I ran at the place I had been standing, holding my arms out. The wind came up and lifted me into the air. “Look!” I yelled to my wife who I could see below me in the large cavern room. She did. I woke up with a wildly beating heart. My sleep torn asunder again. 3:30 said the clock in demonic red numerals. I lay there until the clock said a 4:00 and gave up on sleep. Not much I could do about it. My dreams were just putting in there usual hours on the graveyard shift.

Posted in can't really complain but, Dreamtime, House and home, pieces of the mirror, thinking in words | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dream Owls at Dawn

The gentle hoo-hoo of owls

echoes through

my dream forest

growing closer

and closer

then passing

I wake to hear them

moving off

fading

into the edges of dawn

on silent wings.

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The Effect of Light in Amsterdam on My Childhood

SF  Skyline

Image by jm3 via Flickr

I was thinking about a time long ago when I was remembering my childhood in California. I was thinking about it in a way that changed the color of my memories. The sun was whitish-yellow in a different way. I had the same feeling when I walked out of the airport in Amsterdam. The light was different than in California where the airplane had taken off, but who could say how it was different? It just was.

In fact I was thinking about the moment I walked out of the airport in Amsterdam in which I was remembering a day in my California childhood, but with the light of Amsterdam all around the yard where I was playing. I turned to my friend who was also seeing European light for the first time and said, “The light is different here.” He just shrugged and grunted. The light had not invaded his memories instantly. He did not understand, and I could not explain it to him. So I just smiled at the thunderstorm sky of a new continent.

Posted in California, change, paying attention, pieces of the mirror, Telling Stories, time travel, whereever you go there you are | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Pieces of the Mirror

Things come up. Things drift away. I pick up pieces and examine them to gain some understanding of the world through the tiny bits I can lay my hands on. I try to piece them together into a picture that makes sense. I call this my life. I am sure others would view the pieces differently and arrange them in different ways that would not make sense to me. I am not worried about that. I am only concerned about what makes sense to me. Maybe you will see the sense in it, or maybe you will just throw up your hands and say, “this person makes no sense at all! I have no time for this nonsense!” And that will be the end of our short relationship. And, that is fine, because I can only describe and arrange things as they make sense for me. So I hope it works out for you here in my broken mirror land. If it doesn’t it’s really not your fault. You have your own pieces to arrange.

Posted in developing relationships, thinking in words, whereever you go there you are | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A Tongue Twister Moment

I broke a blue bottle on the front porch, and as I cleaned it up a few tiny pieces fell on the bright lawn.

“Blue glass in the green grass: Blue grass in the green glass,” I chanted on my way to the garbage can, not knowing which phrase would come out. Sometimes what came out made no sense at all. It’s been a long time since a tongue twister happened to me.

Posted in Found Art, playing games, Telling Stories | Tagged , , | Leave a comment