 
Rated X For Excellence

By Robin Xavier Fontaine

Copyright © 2013 by Robin Xavier Fontaine

Smashwords Edition

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All twelve works in this anthology have been previously published in 2013.

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For SS: Heroic people surround me, but of them all, you are my greatest inspiration.

Table of Contents

Author's Notes

A Great Notion, This Love Is

Cosmogony's Riddle

Diamonds From The Void

Gonna Gotta Let My Hair Down

The Thinking Human's Etymologies

Spectacles Of Love

How I Became Insane (An Insomniac's Tale)

Brainwash

I Had Always Been So

Passion's Energies

Horizons Around Us

Beyond Her Curtain

Connecting with Robin Xavier Fontaine
Author's Notes

There are five volumes of poetry that follow. They are A Great Notion, This Love Is; Diamonds From The Void; Gonna Gotta Let My Hair Down; Spectacles Of Love; and Horizons Around Us. Cosmogony's Riddle is a series of three related essays. The Thinking Human's Etymologies is a collection of fifty fictional word origins – some humorous and some simply satirical or pointed. How I Became Insane (An Insomniac's Tale) and Brainwash are humorous stories. I Had Always Been So is a short account of a person's experience of living through times of homosexual repression to a contemporary environment of marriage equality. I offer eleven vignettes in the aptly titled Passion's Energies, and the book concludes with the longest piece, Beyond Her Curtain. It is an apocryphal story about the redemption of a cynical, corrupt man who believes he has met God and his wife.

Read, and enjoy.
A Great Notion, This Love Is

The apple, cleft from its bough, wrongly rises;

Satisfied, yet always yearning,

I find myself in whirlpools of love.

Not to be cherished for a season,

Then limply cast asunder

As the common beauty of the butterfly

Or the rose.

Neither the sparkling sky of the white clouds

Nor even the stallion's sugar cube –

I put this notion you have given me

In a pantheon of the ethereal:

This transformation of my life

Is nothing less than a Great Idea

Like an irresistible play;

Or to live yet another day.

No Phoenix arisen, if not stirred

By the commotion of the great notion;

So it has been with me,

Life sprung from the ash

Of an earlier existence.

A mortality spent in the closet,

Rattling the bones of hesitancy's regret;

And so I was forsaking new ideas

In the bitter quest to be an old maid.

Not quite like a page that is turned,

Nor appearing to me like a mist-borne spirit,

I found you on my threshold one day

Inspiring in me this embrace:

To always aspire to this Great Idea.

It is neither understood, nor is it

Expressible in my own limpid words;

A great thought leads to a world

Never before seen by human eye;

And you, my Great Idea,

Are my new world this day.

***
Cosmogony's Riddle

A Sprite's Life

The world we live in is quantized; everything changes in discrete jumps. In an instant, the Universe appears – the greatest jump of all, as far as existence is concerned. One moment, you're single – the next moment, you're married – another jump. One day, you're living the daily grind, the next day you're retired – a jump. At one instant, you're alive, the next you have passed away – the final personal jump of our lives. And, one moment, there are a dozen oatmeal cookies cooling on a tray on your stove top; the next moment, half of them are gone – a jump that occurs routinely in my kitchen (I live alone, so I blame it on the sprites.)

Some things in the Universe appear to change gradually, but in fact change that seems to take place gradually to our perceptions, is in fact change composed of a multitude of tiny imperceptible jumps. What could be more gradual in the world than the motion of objects? Consider a billiard ball on its table, rolling from one end to another after a player makes a shot. Certainly, our senses inform us, this must be a smooth, gradual change; but it is not. Space itself is quantized, and the billiard ball, in its motion, jumps from one region of three dimensional space to the next, in tiny displacements approximately on the scale of the Planck length (an extraordinarily miniscule distance, it is held to be the smallest meaningful length in the Universe.) And so, the apparent gradual motion of objects is a trick of the eye. Time, as well, is quantized, at intervals known as the Planck time; no span of time shorter than this has any physical meaning whatsoever. So, the apparitions of gradual motion and gradual time are mere illusions – at all levels, change occurs in jumps.

I have a miniature grandfather clock sitting on its own special table in a corner of my living room; it was given to me by my father for my tenth birthday – it has run without interruption since I first put in some batteries and plugged it in that day long ago. It really is a marvellous device, capable of running on three power sources: Batteries, plug-in, or, for a short time, on its internal weight system. I feel an intimate connection with this clock, perhaps because it embodies the memory for me of my much-missed father; but it is also important to me because, somehow, it has taken on the symbolic meaning of my mortality. At times I can feel a little spooked at the thought of it grinding to a halt, and no longer keeping time – it's as though something else would die as well. Now, I don't fancy for a moment that I would cease to live if the clock stopped, but something inside of me would die. I think, maybe, what I feel would die is, in some important way, my memory of my father. Keeping the clock he gave me running has been a mission for me since his funeral over ten years ago; I don't believe I'm being superstitious, although the sensation I have is remarkably like a superstitious feeling. It is my tribute to his memory that I shall, for the remainder of my days, maintain the clock and keep it operating continuously. It is the final thing I can do for a man that I loved and admired so dearly.

I calculated recently during one of the chasms of unfilled time that have appeared on my landscape since I retired, that the pendulum of the miniature grandfather clock swings a full cycle, back and forth, every 2.447 seconds. (You would not be jumping to the wrong conclusion if you presume that I was very bored that particular day – I counted the pendulum's cycles for a full hour – twice.) A milestone in my life will be when the clock's pendulum completes its one-billionth cycle, sometime in my eighty-eighth year. It seems like a remarkable coincidence to me that I have long thought that living until the age of eighty-seven would be a good, long life. So, when I finished my calculations, and saw that the clock's billionth cycle will occur in the year of my wished-for expiration, I had a very superstitious feeling. In a world that seems to have so many astonishing coincidences in it, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see my final days in that eighty-eighth year. Such coincidences just jump out at me at times when I ponder the world we live in.

Here's a coincidence that happened in my life decades ago: I was reading about Carl Jung's description of meaningful coincidences, widely known as synchronicity. As Jung related it, a patient of his had just been discussing a beetle, when an actual beetle appeared at the window of Jung's office. Just as I was reading that, I became aware that Let It Be by The Beatles was playing on my radio. It was the first of numerous times I had that superstitious feeling when encountering a notable coincidence in my life (this was several years after that single had been released – it wasn't played very often anymore.) It certainly is, when experiencing an apparently meaningful coincidence, a sensation of something jumping out at you. There's a moment of terrified fascination when the coincidence manifests itself in your perceptions. When you open your eyes to all the coincidences around us, is it any wonder that so many people are superstitious, or believe in magic?

One could argue that life is filled with so many events, even in the span of a single day, that just as on occasion the planets will fill a single quadrant of the sky, events in the world around you will eventually line up in remarkable fashion, generating a remarkable coincidence. Just as you're thinking about old so-and-so that you haven't seen in years, the phone rings and it's her! Is it an incredible, meaningful coincidence, or is the event as mundane as the minute hand of a clock sitting exactly atop the hour hand? Just reflect, one might propose, on how often we think of people we haven't seen in a while – we do that quite often, don't we? Sooner or later, the sceptic would argue, one of those recalled people will call on you close in time to when you thought of him or her. And, I concede, the sceptic would be right – but simply because astonishing coincidences are bound to occur in the world, it doesn't negate the possibility that such coincidences are meaningful in some way.

I suppose I should come clean now about what I think of apparently meaningful coincidences, though I would caution my reader that I will do so in a slippery way. Just as I take the position that I cannot know whether there is a deity responsible for Creation or whether the Universe is just an impersonal consequence of the laws of physics, I cannot know whether the remarkable coincidences that surround me are meaningful or not. So, my position on the question of any putative meanings behind life's coincidences is I don't know."

Albert Einstein seemed to rebel in his later years against the apparent truth that the Universe's various activities are ultimately the consequences of random chance phenomena; in his day, the evidence was against him, and from what I can elucidate from modern experimental results, the case for random chance at work in the Universe is now overwhelming.

Is there not something that seems meaningless in a world where events – all events – are ultimately the results of random phenomena? I suppose one could say that there is no inherent meaning we can discern in the workings of Creation, but then, isn't meaning a human concept in the first place?

So, we are still free to ascribe meaning to our inner and outer worlds. The meanings that you give to things might be open to challenge on the basis of consistency with other beliefs or facts, but still, ultimately, we are free to see whatever meanings we believe in regardless of conflicting beliefs in others. If I want to ponder the possibility that there are hidden meanings in the Universe, much as Einstein sought his hidden variables, I am free to do so. I don't think I'll ever answer the question, even if I could live a thousand years – but, as geniuses like Einstein or Darwin might point out, the crux of all thoughts is the question. The journeys of our explorations are even more valuable than the prizes to be found at the destinations. So, whether we believe in Gravity, or whether we believe in pots of gold at the end of rainbows, there is much to be gained simply by the process of arriving at our beliefs. (It has been pointed out that since it is physically impossible for anyone to stand at the end of a rainbow, maybe there really is leprechaun treasure there - only leprechauns have the magic power to travel on rainbows, or to their very ends. Were there ancient peoples of Ireland who were pygmies, just before historical times, whose existence precipitated the leprechaun legends? Oh, let's not go there!)

So, by way of concluding this opening essay, I can say that we came full circle; we started with the demonstrable notion that all existence changes in discrete jumps, and we end with Einstein trying to undo the theory he did so very much to found – the science of jumps, quantum mechanics. I think it's fruitful to point out now that our perceptions of the world we live in can change is dramatic jumps – Darwin's evolutionary theory being perhaps the most startling jump in human perception ever – two lifetimes after the publication of his findings, billions of people around the world still haven't caught up with the essential reality of that jump. Einstein contributed four jumps to human comprehension of the world – five, if you count the most notable technology that is derived from his theories: The atomic weapon. From his theories, which are required for modern scientific cosmogonies, comes the device which, if unleashed in sufficient numbers, would bring Doomsday to humanity. From cosmogonies often come conditions for the end of the world: Is that a meaningful coincidence, or not?

Nice Is the New Good

Long ago now, even before my own childhood, people commonly admonished children to "be good." Nowadays, of course, we are much more likely to say to a child, "Be nice." But aren't the words, on inspection, almost synonymous? Nice, in practice, seems to generally mean "gentle, non-threatening, will-do-no-harm." Good, as well, means (or once meant) pretty much the same thing – with one important, telling exception: The word good carries to this day a connotation of Higher Moral Authority declaring what constitutes goodness in a person. Nice has no such connotation, though some see in the word, as it is often used, a hint of humanistic spirituality in people's feelings about the qualities of niceness.

The old Jesus was good; the new Jesus is nice. Is there anything particularly wrong with that, from the point of view of Christian believers? Only from a very conservative religious point of view, I presume, is there anything wrong with the modern secular world inculcating in Christians that nice, as the ear hears the word, is an important quality about Jesus to emphasize. Jesus wasn't good in the perverse sense of wishing great harm on people in the name of Higher Moral Authority; he was good in the straightforward sense of the word – he was nice. And aren't a great many modern, liberal Christians who follow the teachings of the good and nice Jesus embodiments of what Christ obviously always wanted his followers to be? It is not at all the exception to the rule that such modern Christians are generally tolerant, compassionate, generous, open-minded people who are sceptical of how authority is exercised. (As a revolutionary, Jesus, it almost went without saying, was against the authority of his day and place; he was also likely opposed to all corrupt expressions of human authority. It might be a stretch to say he was anti-authoritarian – or it might not be. There are numerous threads of egalitarianism in the Gospels.)

Yet, it is the minority of modern Christians, who promulgate the view that God and Jesus are nasty, or good in the perverse sense of the word, who typify in many people's minds the character of Christianity itself. Undoubtedly, such fire-and-brimstone preachers and their denominations are images of Christianity because of the way the lenses of the media are focused on their antics. (God sends tornadoes, earthquakes and hurricanes because of same-sex marriage issues? Let's not go there!) Book and CD burnings, rants against Mohammed and Islam, undertones of general bigotry in the mindset of such Christians – and their desperate craving for political (authoritarian?) power all contribute to an image of Christians in general that is both unfair and undeserved. The bogey-man can kill you if you really believe in him; and so, antediluvian views of human affairs (wordplay noted) make inroads everywhere in modern America and, sometimes, elsewhere in the western world, aka Christendom. Journalists, at least most of them, seem to be unwitting propaganda broadcasters for these distorted relics of Christianity-past. Punish the daylights out of criminals, they shout; chastity as public birth-control policy; Creationism (anti-reason) in public schools; and, I'm a trifle offended to note, husbands are superior to their wives. I could go on and on with the pseudo-Christian, manifestly authoritarian agendas of these backward folks, but I believe enough has been written about these people who just aren't nice at all. What they worship is, perversely, in their own language, Satanic: Hatred is what they worship, and the people that fight against their influence ought to take note of that. They live in a dream-world of disturbed thoughts and feelings. By no means the only method of opposing them, but the most important, is to demonstrate over and over again that love is much, much more powerful than hatred. So, we should do our best, in the true spirit of the good and nice Jesus, to refrain from hating them in return.

What is most perturbing to me about this far-right version of Christianity is that it seems to be, with some notable success, inspiring many people outside their congregations that The End Of Time is coming – either the end of civilization, or the end of humanity itself. I'm almost expecting to see End Times commemorative coin sets shilled on the late-night infomercials any day now. It goes without saying, that in a world with nuclear arsenals and panic-inducing hotspots like Iran and North Korea, as well as nuclear-armed dictators elsewhere, the end could be coming for civilization and ultimately for humanity as well – but to seriously believe that this is the time of the Second Coming, the Antichrist, Armageddon and the Resurrection of the Dead as mystically invoked by the Book of Revelation? Believe in lunacy, and you just might act like a lunatic – people who think the much feared and much awaited End Times are upon us just might neglect solving important problems in their own lives and in the world as a whole. Do people neglect personal, corporate and government debt because, well, the world is ending anyway? Such fatalism does take the spirit out of people, and I think these nasty pseudo-Christians and their vile beliefs that the media do so much to disseminate have a lot to do with the malaise gripping so much of the world. Somehow, some way, people have to realize that reason is a gateway to our humanity, not an obstacle to getting into Heaven. But since the essential problem is the influence of disturbed, hateful characters, I'm afraid I can think of no quick fix.

But remember – don't let your wits be overwhelmed by lunacy, and be nice.

The Cosmic Coincidence

Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein stand out in the modern consciousness as progenitors of scientific cosmogony. Of course, multitudes of others have made invaluable contributions to the cosmogony, but it is those two individuals, I believe, whose shoulders others have since stood upon. One irony (or more correctly, a geneticist might point out – perversity) concerns Darwin's corner of the modern scientific edifice - his contribution to the cosmogony: The theory of evolution. It seems that a despairingly large number of people since at least the early twentieth century have been gripped by the demonstrably false notion that humanity is devolving rapidly to a state where civilization itself will no longer be sustainable. Legions of dimwitted governments and voters marching off the cliff in unison, like intoxicated lemmings. Oh no, it's the End Times! Extinction by devolution.

Then there are those who calculate – or, rather, feel, that nuclear holocaust is imminent; the clock approaches midnight – the insane dictator – or the insane democratic leader – punches all the buttons on his desk and poof! The End Times are here! Extinction by E = mc2.

I'm not suggesting that we don't have a way to go in securing the world from the latter catastrophe, but is nuclear Armageddon really imminent as some feel it is? Personally, after a lifetime of contemplating this issue – I don't think so. Just as any individual, in principle, could commit suicide at any time, humanity could die out suddenly in blazes of fission and fusion; and, if the current kinds of circumstances internationally were to persist for many, many centuries – then after such a span of time, I think, extinction by nuclear war would become likely.

How ironic, though, that the modern cosmogony invokes in many people scenarios for the end of the world – a meaningful coincidence, perhaps, or is it a matter of human psychology? That is, give us a cosmogony, and we'll find a way to imagine that the beginning also necessarily points to an end of everything. (That the end of humanity must come, inevitably, trillions of years from now at the most, owes to the matter of galaxies collapsing into a Big Crunch; or, an entropy-death of the Universe. The modern cosmogony does say that, eventually, after a near-eternity, all life will be gone from the Universe; if humanity or our descendant species can hang on for a trillion years before facing the Real End of Everything, is that anything to worry about now?)

Cosmogony leads us to extinction theories. Is it all a matter of our mortal psyches believing that what has a beginning, must surely have an end in the foreseeable future? Or is it a meaningful coincidence that the gentle ruminations of Darwin and Einstein have helped lead us to modern end-of-the-world hypotheses? I don't know, but I am an optimist in how I live, and I tend to see humanity's future in the same way: One disease after another will fall to medicine; one world after another in our solar system will be colonized; life may be dramatically and fruitfully extended for the individual; important resources may run out, but will be easily replaced; climate change won't destroy civilization; viruses won't attack us from the wilds and kill off the entire species; and the Creator, presuming this is an intended Universe, won't decide to capriciously pull the plug on humanity. It is a matter of believing.

**********

On a personal note, I have found the writing of these essays to be quite cathartic. I think I'll book my next holiday and jump across the pond to Ireland where I'll chase after rainbows; and before I go I'll unplug the miniature grandfather clock my father gave me on my tenth birthday, and let its gears wind down and grind to a halt. I don't think or feel any bad coincidences would occur if I did those things.

Peace.
Diamonds From The Void

"Sweet Death Awakens Me"

The Exhaustion of the Moment

Desultory craven wants -

My vivid ken weakens for your lifeless body.

Like so much that is but nonce,

They say you are lewd, and yet not bawdy.

Eros surely would frown on the sight

Of lifeless legs and arms all about,

Trying to tempt us in the cold night -

Not with sweet nothings but a wanton shout.

Give me at last a gangly lover,

And a fine felt checkered tablecloth;

Give me words that gyre as they hover

About my flame, dancing as the moth.

I would lay me down at last in my bed,

The exhalation of night the softest of breath;

I would pull you down at last to my bed,

And close my eyes for a little sweet death.

**********

Child's Play

Roses are red,

The sky is blue;

The shapes in the clouds

Are the faces of you.

**********

Limerick # 1

There once was a man from Abrust

Who would cuss and cuss about lust.

He met a man named Bjork

Who blew out his cork –

What's left in his closet is dust.

**********

Immortal Fire

Must you?

Enter a shambled hall where spiders' nests

Have grown beards in time's measured pace;

Dust off the ashes from your toes,

As volcanoes glow brightest in their death throes.

Time, once cursed for bring me nearer

That day of doom when I'll be no more,

Is now a friend for giving me a past,

Yet never letting me know what's still to come.

These hallways do not flatter such an old hag,

Though nimbly your eyes dart about my crown;

Frown not, my sweet love, as you feel the ground tremble,

For it is only me, I'm coming alive.

Time has one surprise left in store,

For when the dust in these halls blows to the sky,

Will my eyes open to see yet a winsome face,

Or is it my fate, to at last, die?

Ah, my sweetie, roll so I may touch your chest,

For the breast is best when enjoyed in our nest;

Death scares me not one bit -

For in these halls, I quake by your sweet side.

**********

An Isle of Temptations

In my hut there is no smut,

Save for what goes on in my mind;

From this cut, a vein does jut –

A reminder to you to always be kind.

Treat me like the lady I can be,

And you'll find a craving woman at your knee;

And when I want – not smut, but just thee:

Feel free to unleash my quivering tree.

Ah, you rascal, you tempting dessert,

You know that cut if injured will hurt!

Leave me only when you've had your craven way -

I'll be dazed in smutty dreams, come the breaking of day.

**********

"All In Nature Have Wings"

Diamond Dust

Ah, starry heavens with your diamond dust clouds

The ancients of this world did not quite know

How draped in ether's natural beauty you would be

When inspected in a simple cosmos lens.

Andromeda, Cepheus, Lyra and the Bears

Stare back at us in eternal twinkle –

Crux, Hydra, Eridanus and the Hunter

Might yet speak to us if life's not too fickle.

On bended knee, perhaps of bent mind –

I utter a prayer to this new heaven:

Would that a friend I could find in the stars

Come down from the Mount and apply the mead

To my mortal, mortal world.

**********

Demon Yeast

With a little grape, honey, berry or tuber

Civilization's oath became the drunken vow;

Quenched on the altar of its press –

Wine, we find, is the perpetual promise.

Though I grow limp under the spell

Of a good Chantilly or Cabernet –

And though I awaken comically -

I am ever taken by wine's tragedy.

My garden grows a variety of fruit,

The sweet honey for mead I buy at the store –

But the secret to my recipe is one of life's least:

Ah, you addicting, fermenting unicellular yeast.

**********

Diatomaceous Earth

Twin world spinning its tales 'round Tau Ceti –

Grasses grow there that feed on the sand;

Herbs as succulent as they are leafy

Float in the air and land in the hand.

Out there 'round that G-eight star

The Avian's eyes are fixed on the earth

For though we cannot ever travel that far –

They wish to discover our planet's true worth.

When at last we tap into their tales

With momenton dishes forged from palladium –

When they in turn call back to our hails –

They'll ask us if we like earth rare or just medium.

They crunch on the glassy soils of their world

And they've depleted its store of silicate foods -

When they learn we smoke grass their sails will unfurl

And across inky space they'll come in foul moods.

Oh, to be conquered by such greedy people -

Humanity will hang its head in disgrace;

Our comeuppance will come at the temple's steeple

When their vicar tells us they are God's master race.

So radio-silent we must always be!

Those aliens are sure to come spill our blood –

If they find out that we strive to be free

They'll come down to drag us all through the mud.

Empty-headed lunatics, they truly are

Eager to enslave humans for no real gain

And though they come from that other star,

We'll know them at once as a people insane.

**********

Autumn

Anguished by vanity's fair revelation,

A world nestled in a sleepy hollow;

Coiled immortality in modesty tucked in -

A plan for the warmth of the low moon's return.

To feign death is the ruse of the wild

When battered by elemental cold fury,

And still it hurls its flags from treetops -

Poignant emblems of another fine year.

**********

That Mockingbird of the City

Oh, it says exactly what I say,

And acts as though mere chance has occurred;

It follows me about through the day,

A mirror to everything that it has heard.

Vain creature, please stay south next year,

I beg of you humbly with a briny tear –

I cannot bear to hear my own expressions

Thrown in my face by one always so near.

I am mocked! My wild nature tells me –

Can not you but sing your own song?

One more sounded alarm and I'll flee,

For the manner you show me is wrong.

**********

Spring

The ewe celebrates Imbolc in its way;

The robin arrives from the dusty south;

The poets set out to practice their lay,

And the river swells from tail to its mouth.

Effortlessly the land rises unbidden;

I cannot jar my senses yet more;

For the time of cold I was lying and hidden;

The world's now mine – I'm pushing the door.

**********

Misery

Deep inside the frills of rock

In a heavy void unseen by a soul

Lies what once was animate –

Now dead, still, no part of the whole.

**********

A True Golden Age

Ages have passed and now it's forgotten

How we once swung from the fruit-laden bough;

Time has not been kind to Humanity

For we have fallen from Nature's grace, somehow.

They had plenty and the world had no crowds,

Save for the creatures they hunted on plains;

Though they may not have lived long in that world,

They knew nothing of our monumental pains.

When they found gold, it was but a shiny thing,

Like a minnow in a lake or a drop of the dew;

They knew not it would someday have great worth –

With mirth they would foresee how it is we rue.

That age passed before writing had come,

Not long after human beings first stood –

The enigma at the crux of this matter,

Is that it was my very own childhood.

**********

"The Man with the Axe, The Queen of Diamonds, and the Jokers"

Astounded I Looked Up

Ma and Pa never looked so fine as they did that day

When they sat in chairs as I took my prize button;

I sang my heart out to them during that play,

Though I was cast as the family's maid-in-mutton.

How little faith I inspired in them with my ills,

How often I let them down ever so slightly –

They placed their hopes on my sisters' heads -

I prayed for their ethereal dream worlds nightly.

Ma used to say that with my good looks,

A handsome man would carry me away;

It turned out he needed to use barbed hooks –

For with my family, I ever wished to stay.

A cocoon, after all, is the warmest of places,

And like some hesitant moth I carried mine about;

I did not drop it till I saw my child's faces

Wondering why her Mommy carried no clout.

A lout, my knight in shining armor was,

Spoiled in talents yet deprived of good skill;

I left him when my child had grown, because

I discovered with him what it is to be ill.

And then I met the one my Ma had promised,

Out of a dappled shade cast by a cherry tree –

I'm staying with this one, for now I have kissed!

I've discovered, at last, what it is to be free.

**********

Meditation

I was a sweet child to my sisters,

Yet known to them as dull-of-tooth;

Truly I would gently skulk away

Not averse to being called the coward.

So my innards I heal upon this pillow each day;

A sanctuary for my brittle bones.

Life's gone, at last, to another place,

And my heart is free to beat on my drums.

A little dagger is needed when danger's about,

So I resolved I would get my revenge –

I would hate them all till I was blue in the face,

And feeble of fight - so I turned on a verse.

The raven does not make its prophecy

Lightly as it knows it makes a vile curse;

But one day, I swear, your unkind will be gone

Or at least set to slashing at empty airs.

I find at the center a boil of rage

Over the islands of humanity set adrift;

Why must we strain to turn this page,

And tell our children simply, life is a gift?

**********

Limerick # 2

There once was a man from Knowit,

Renowned to be a great poet.

He charmed with sweet rhymes

But was harmed many times

For he liked to join "knows" with "blow it."

**********

An Aphorism

Degrees of choice, degrees of fate –

Find your voice before it's too late.

***
Gonna Gotta Let My Hair Down

They held a competition to see who was least neurotic; everyone got a prize.

Gonna Gotta Let My Hair Down

Gonna prove that old is the new young;

Gotta put the word on my tongue;

Let me show you on the way out –

My proofs always raise a new doubt.

Heir to the old way of seeing,

Down is the latest way of being.

Crank it up another knife notch –

Trade your latte for a shotta' scotch;

Go to hell with that hand basket -

Fears' tears may not ever mask it.

Circle in someone else's sky –

This love of ours will never die.

Honey, I can see your frown –

So –

Gonna gotta let my hair down.

**********

They held a contest to see who had the highest self-esteem; it had to be cancelled on account of the result that none of the people entering had qualified.

**********

Contest By A Graveyard

A contest, properly seen by the eye,

Is but warfare concealed by a veneer;

Though few expect anyone to die,

With vim, struggles will ever so veer.

Live by the match, die by it as well;

Did no-one say that all will be spent

In the end after years under that spell –

The gamblers forgot to pay all our rent.

**********

According to my nonsense book of word etymologies, "dig", as in to follow another's train of thought, derives from "digest", in the sense of ruminating on a thought.

**********

The Matter Is Grave, So Dig It

Oh, ribose-chewing bacteria so robust,

You've announced your presence with another gust;

Told that I've ever been a silly little girl –

I've nothing to do with the doings of the churl.

My love of gentle living has brought us to this?

When not one debt did I ever miss!

Stealing from our children is a notable crime;

Nature, and God, agree with this rhyme.

So tear your hairs out one by one –

I'll let mine down and keep having fun.

**********

When all about you are losing their heads –keep yours.

When everyone else is pulling their hair out – let yours down.

**********

Vox Populi – Please?

A tyrant, my first husband was known to me as –

Oedipus was vanquished once and for all;

The river dried up and I found myself stranded –

A handsome man that mothered carried me off.

Still, I found him giving succor to other women,

So off I went on my own again, paddle in hand.

Though my name may be Freedom, I am spent

I cannot trust myself to another man again;

I must row my own boat down mystery's river

I must never let another stand over my shadow.

For it is my light I cast, my eyes that see,

Give me the vote, and I'll ever be free.

**********

The ways of liberty are challenging ways – they bring out our potentials;

all else is as death to the human heart.

**********

Freedom. You`re The Best.

How may the otter make its hurdling ways if it cannot swim?

I tell my river friend, "Paddle, paddle, paddle!"

Still, no entrance through the watery gates for him.

Lay down among the flowers with my new love,

Freedom flitters all about;

A new love my lover will be each day;

Is one day really like the one before?

Keep the ball-bearings rolling

So they do not rust;

That is the way of freedom.

Cursed tongue you speak in forked semantics –

Freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from

All the habits of a life,

Is what they cry in their communal whine.

Give me a home where the buffalo roam,

And I'll be free of all that wish-talk.

I've made my way on my own dime,

And, brother - I am free.

**********

I have to confess to being an agnostic; my take on atheism, however, is that nothing could be further from the truth. Insisting that there must be absolutely no inherent meaning is to live in the small world of the senses. We need a reason to finally breathe.

**********

From Within You

In you, my lover, I have found something new;

Not dapper or dandy or a trite thing do-goodish –

For it is Devil-may-care within and all around you;

You are my night star, and I your mating fish.

Let me swim low where the water is dusky;

Let me jump high to stab at your sweet bait;

Grow in your warm tones a sound that is husky;

Let us choose what way we will now ever mate.

None about on the skulking prowl around the shore

Will ever know love as you and I make it dear;

Riches are poor! They shout and stammer yet more –

Sacrifice your courage at the altar of fear.

I never will, in my warm loving waters, my friend –

You never, in your sky, will dim with the ages;

The old make way for the young – death is no end;

And so now let us start writing winsome new pages.

**********

Incorporate all the elements into your being – earth, air, water and fire combine to form what is felt as love, and what is experienced as freedom.

**********

The Fury Of The Elements

Bing, buzz, bangle, spanner in sight;

Dish, dash, spangle, turn out the light;

Create, crux, crash it all together;

Such is how we take control of the weather.

**********

Democracy has an inferiority complex owing to the apparent ubiquity of authoritarian behaviour within it. What if stupid is smarter? Oh well, civilisation has been one long episode of social-political collapse, and we can't expect to iron out all the wrinkles of freedom's ways in just a few lifetimes. Don't give up – improve! Marche, marche! Liberté, egalité! Destruction always brings the opportunity for creation, and in the coming years, the destruction around us will have your pulling your hair out, unless you take the tonic of letting your hair down. Prepare to create a better country! (Hint – I'm alluding to direct democracy.) I'll be ready, 'cause I'm gonna gotta let my hair down.

**********

Throw Me Away

The river passes this way but once;

From there it is on to the eternal sea.

Cloudless forms may point a new way;

A new way, at last, for my love to flow.

Boundaries appear most of all in the mind;

Fate awaits those who wait at the shore;

Slip dewy limbs into that river's embrace,

And the golden towers may rejoin with humanity.

**********

They had a contest to see who could swim most like a fish; the couples who jumped in the water nude and made love were the unanimous choices of all observers.

***
The Thinking Human's Etymologies

Author's Foreword

In all fairness to dictionary makers and their teams of linguists, I have to say they have constructed the most compelling of stories to explain the origins of human languages around the world, and that most of their etymologies in particular stand the test of reason. However, I have thought of scores of possible alternate etymologies for various English words, and for this slim volume I have chosen the fifty etymologies that I believe to most plausible (when you think about them.)

I can't claim to be a linguist, but I am a poet of sorts, and I have studied words extensively at certain uneventful times in my life. For example, I looked at the name Oedipus of myth and story and realized that with the first digamma-f dropped, and the internal digamma-f transformed into a "p" sound (digamma-f was a "v" sound), then the very ancient character of myth may have been called something like v'dovus in pre-Hellenic times – a word that would seem to be, if it existed, cognate with words such as vdoba: Similar words are ubiquitous in European languanges, particularly eastern Europe's languages, and they all mean "widow-maker." If Oedipus' original name actually meant "widow-maker", then that would cast more light on the meanings of the myth surrounding him. The later, Hellenic pronunciation of his name, said to be a homophone with "swollen ankle", might be nothing more than a bizarre accident. (I don't claim to be the first of have thought of this possible origin of the character's name, but it did occur to me spontaneously.)

So, with those credentials in hand, doing my best to keep my cheek from protruding, here are my fifty etymologies I am putting out there for linguists and the general public to consider. I believe that what I am doing will cause a paradigm shift in our understanding of human language itself. Or, at least, we might wonder about the underlying meaning of the words we use so much, a little more.

I have to go now – my significant other is complaining again of being neglected by me; read on, gentle reader:

**********

abalone (n.): from a + baloney (rock); derived from the similarity in appearance between the shell and a sea-rock, hence, "That's abalone." Alternate etymology: from "aa(rgh), baloney!" maritime people's would say upon finding the tasty treat from the sea.

artificial (n.): from art + official; based on the observation that government-sanctioned products of human creativity are art-official.

author (n.): contraction from the days when authors were almost exclusively male, in reference to their usual consideration of their wives – awful + to \+ her; author; in more recent times, with so many female writers, I would propose to keep the word author, but create a modern etymology such as a contraction of awful to the significant other. {Sorry, dear, but I've been quite busy with these etymologies....}

bard (n.): from barred; from the fact that individuals of this class tend to be barred from numerous so-called respectable establishments and institutions. (For what reasons, the author can make no account.)

Beatles (name of popular musical group): from the group's beliefs on misery and violence: Beat (defeat) ills.

believe (v.i.): from Germanic be + lie + ve (we); from the virtually proven notion, that no matter what one's belief system, one will, by human necessity, subscribe to some lies. That is, we humans will always find there will be at least one lie in anything we believe.

breast (n.): from an old internal rhyme, "The best place to rest your head – is on a breast."

capitalist (n.): from capital + ist; derived from the observation that the wealthy merchant classes generally aspire to take control of the workings of their nations' capital city government.

conservative (n.): from con + serv(e) + ative; derived from the observation that conservative politicians tend to con the voters into believing that they serve the voters, and not some other wealthy special interests.

critic (n.): from cry + tick; drawn from the observation that, as a class of people, such individuals are almost invariably neurotic; that is they cry without reason and have numerous ticks; hence, critic.

cynic (n.): from sin + I + see; a person who tends to believe others' actions are always poor, or that their motives are questionable, hence sin I see (cyn + i + cee = cynic.)

democracy (n.): from dem + o + cracy; derived from the way voters see the politicians, and the way the politicians see the voters: 'dem o' cracy (them all crazy.)

dictator (n.): from diced a(nd) tore; from the answer to the seemingly eternally asked questions after an appearance of a widow-maker in a land: "How did your village get burned down?" "Diced-and-tore." "How did they all die?" "Diced-and-tore." "Where are all your sons?" "Diced-and-tore conscripted them. They're dead now; they all left widows and children. But for now, at least, we are free of the dictator."

encyclopedia (n.) from Latin in + cyclo (organized movement)+ ped (foot) + ia; based upon the fact that encyclopedia salespeople go about in organized fashion from door-to-door on foot.

familiar (adj.): from French famille (family) + English you're; "You look familiar" – "You're family." "He looks familiar" – "He's your family," etc.

fox (n.): acronym for fascist on x-ray.

Fundamentalist (n): from fun + da + mental + ist; from such individuals' noted tendency to drive others crazy – tease the mind – fun 'da mental (+ ist.)

giant (n.) from guy (is an) + ant; from the declaration of old: "The guy (is an) ant next to that big creature – the giant."

health fascist (n.): from the belief that all directives and imperatives for individuals to live in physically healthy ways is ill-considered and rotten, hence health (is) fascist.

home (n.): from ho (laughter) + me; Old English expression referring to the workday or travelling abroad – the best part is when you get home.

Italy (proper name of country): long considered to be shaped like a tall boot, the name for the country may actually come from the fact that it also resembles a tall "y"; hence I tall y – Italy.

justice (n.): from just + ice; from the cynical but widely reported phenomena that what has the appearance of justice often is really just ice, ie. cold-hearted cruelty.

kitchen (n.): contraction of kids bitching; "First thing in the morning," the parents say, "we go to the kids bitching (kitchen.)"

liberal (n.): contraction of lie bares all, ie. the emperor has no clothes.

misanthrope (n.): a person who ought to go away once and for all, save for the fact they are missin' the rope; hence, misanthrope.

mistletoe (n.): from mist + let + o(e); that is, the mist of love let(s) us have an o(rgasm.) Hence, lovers might meet under the mistletoe.

music (n.): from mus(e) + I see; based on the observed tendency for people to meet their muses while listening to music; muse I see – mus(e) I cee – music.

nonsense (n.): from French non (no) + sense; drawn from the noted observations of sociologists that a person who most others consider to be "full of nonsense," usually is one who has the non-sense to say "no" to prevailing beliefs that are not supported by reason.

Occident (proper name of the cultures of European origin): corruption of accident; term used by other parts of the world in describing events of the last five centuries; "All was as usual, then a bad Occident happened."

parlour (n.): from par + lore; from the social truth that the hoped-for atmosphere in a gathering in a parlour is one of parity and equality of exchange of stories; hence par lore, parlour.

perversion (n.): from Latin per (by) + version; "By (per) some person's version, that behaviour is a perversion."

poet (n.): from po(or) it; derived from a sarcastic ancient expression of disgust and contempt for the class of people universally known to be quite dishevelled and pathetically wanting in basic civil manners; hence, "That's a poet (poor it.)

politically correct (adj.): definition suppressed for the sake of post-modern sensibilities.

post-modern (adj.): Exactly what the modern canine would do upon finding a post.

professional (n.): from Latin pro (for) + English fees + I + own + all; hence, "I'm a professional." – "For fees I own all."

qualification (n.): contraction of okay, wall of obfuscation; from the observation that consideration of a candidate's qualifications for a task or job often just creates a wall of obfuscation to the person doing the hiring; corollary: The more a person obfuscates, the more likely they are to have many academic qualifications.

rectify (v.t.): from wrecked + iffy; the feeble promise of a person who has caused substantial harm to another that the situation is perhaps reparable, that is, wrecked-iffy, so he/she will rectify the matter on behalf of the other person.

Saturn (n.): from the appearance of the ringed-planet when observed in primitive telescopes; the planet gave the visual impression of a rotund person who had "Sat on the urn."

science (n.): from silence without the "l"; based on the notion that at dinner parties and other social occasions, conversation topics centering on science will generally result in a very conspicuous si(l)ence from the vast majority of participants.

Shakespeare (proper name of the English playwright): from shake + spear(e); derived from the ultimate challenger of conventional wisdom's persona: He would shake (a) spear(e) at unimaginative thinkers.

Sirius (n.): long ago, in Roman times, it was believed that the near-conjunction of the brightest star and the sun caused the great heat of mid-summer. Hence, the star was known to sear ya's – rendered Sirius today.

socialist (n.): from social (insect) + ist; derived from the historical observation that socialist governments tend to reduce their citizens to the level of mindless troglodytes in service to an unproductive dictator.

tenor (n.): from tenner; from the age-old practice of rating singer's voices on a scale of one-to-ten; the most skilled and pleasing voices are referred to as tenners – tenors.

Universe (n.): from you in (a) verse; based on the charming notion that the Universe is like a great, majestic poem; hence, you in (a) verse.

Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (nouns): from long ago when people spoke to the stars, they would say to the distinct big and little dipper constellations, "Ursa major and Ursa minor." – "Yer's a major (large), and yer's a minor (small.) Hence, the modern pronunciations.

veranda (n.): from Old English ver + an +da; derived from an ironic expression meaning "to step outside" when two males would engage in fisticuffs: All right, you, ver an da!" – "Veer in 'dere!" – "Veer in there!"

wit (n.): from a contraction of with it; "She's really quite with it (quite the wit.)

xenophobia (n.): from see + no + phobia (fear); when a person is unremittingly afraid of or hostile to foreigners, that person can be said to see-no-phobia in himself accounting for his reactions; likewise, he can see-no-phobia in foreigners towards him and/or his country; that is, the one with xenophobia mistakes foreigners' fear for hostility. In acting on his xenophobia, or his aggressive and dismissive ways towards foreigners, he may actually create a self-fulfilling prophecy – the foreigners will, in time, owing to his provocations, come to hate him.

yellow (adj., as of a person's character): from yell "ow!"; from the trait of cowardly individuals to yell "ow" in the face of any sort of adversity; hence, he/she is yellow.

zombie (n.): from sum + be; a person who is compartmentalized in character can be said to be a sum that is less than the potential whole; double-thinkers, hypocrites, and emotionally repressed people of all stripes can be considers as sum-be's (zombies.)

***
Spectacles Of Love

The following six poems jump off from the starting points of familiar ideas; I truly respect the six ideas, as well as deeply loving their human counterpart – my shy, anonymous partner of two years, who is the greatest idea that was ever presented to me. Please read on, and enjoy.

**********

The Vase

Passionately held up to the clarity of light

I see in your form a reflection of me;

Not in detail as beautiful as you

With your sinuous edges -

But as though you admire me too

When my back is turned

And my breasts are held high.

I am as you,

All glass engulfed by form;

Easily shattered if treacherously betrayed;

Forever spoiled in beauty by seams of bonding

Put back in place by the hands of the next owner.

I gaze into the depths of your bowl

In rapturous reflection on what it is to be

On the inside of you;

Never can I be within you,

Though with a child's eyes it is

The most compelling mystery of all.

Let me put a flower within you,

And I will water it daily,

Keeping to my vow to sweeten the broth;

For you, my dear lovely vase,

Are my cherished heirloom,

Sentimental keepsake,

And centrepiece of my shy inner life.

The Whirling Wind

Throw me about on tangents to the sky;

It's a mystery why I stepped into your embrace.

Believing that nothing but bliss and ecstasy

Could follow,

I find a wicked side to soften my love.

I must quit this maelstrom before too long -

None of your others could endure

Your passionate way of being;

I will remember you all my days

For the great force I felt as you swung me about,

But also for the lacerating grit of violent winds.

Why is it that when I reflect on our dances

Across this ancient ruddy landscape,

I can but testify that for the acme of existence,

One must eventually fall into the abyss

Without the light of love?

This wind that has now picked me up

And that sends my blood rushing about

Cannot fail to rouse me in my days left,

For if in my arcs through the sky

I should be callously flung at the rocks,

I now love you so that I will pursue

My whirling wind;

I have attained an eternal wanderlust -

To be taken up once more and again and again

In your death-defying embrace.

The Pyrrhic Victory

We have witnessed the crumbling edifice

And the statues of Gods fallen over;

We have endured false love

And historically blind prophecy

That paradise is ours if we

Are held together by selfishness.

You be greedy for yourself,

And I'll be greedy for me -

In this way we have been led to see

That Utopia is consumed by false profit.

Still, the currents of time have not been frozen -

Yet, perhaps -

And true love that brings truth to ourselves

Is now found in many myriad and miraculous forms -

In this widening river

We have found one another

And in so doing,

Found our centres,

In gyrations around our common centre;

Let the false prophets have their tastes of Pyrrhic

Victory,

As false hope and all attendant lies

Gain them a chance to impose

False freedom as well.

Let them

Cast spells upon themselves -

And turn all

Your eyes away when the gullible are seduced.

You and I will have one another,

And the fires will not intrude upon

Our marriage bed.

The Eccentric

Put your peanut butter on the double-boiler

Then slurp it up in a soup spoon

For all I care;

Your are as crazy as benevolence;

As addled as the clear blue sky;

As dangerous as a midge fly.

Though you are loathed and scorned,

Ridiculed and gossiped about

By the uncanny all around,

I find in the world of the

Self-assigned passions much truth

That if only the world could but hear!

You planted a forest by yourself;

Put loving spins on the web;

You found a treasure in your backyard,

And can spot a mastodon tooth at a mile.

I wish I could ride on your hobby train

Alone with you

In your basement.

I have found in your eccentric love,

All that I need to intrigue me for eternity;

For there is nothing perverse in being true to yourself,

And everything is right in how you love me.

The Television Set

True, I seem to ignore you when your are not

Turned on;

Still, I reflect, you are lovely in any room.

You are still there, tapped into my outlet

After I hit the power by remote;

Were you just a smidgen less awkward

To carry about,

You would be on my back,

Or slung over my hip,

And you could entertain me wherever I go.

When I call you to mind, you have been made

To let me, without fail,

Turn you on;

Colours as true as lover's sweet dreams,

Drama that I rely on to lift my spirits

And keep me alive

When you have no comedy to show me;

Tragedy, athletics, and far, far too much

Physical beauty

I gorge on daily.

I'll tell you now, as though you hear what I say,

Television set,

That as my continual source of companionship,

I love you even more than my past loves,

The book and the game.

And when my day ends,

And it it time to watch your news,

I know you'll be there, turned on,

Keeping me awake

Long, long into the night

With your irresistibly sexy advertisements.

The End Of Time

O, that lover will be your final chapter,

They sung when I told them I was

Eternally betrothed

To you.

What they do not think -

Or perhaps they do not know

For lack of fruitful reflections -

Is that the end of time

Destroys all that has been -

Even Memory is vanquished -

And a new creation follows.

For a novel life to have the happy epilogue,

The old clock must stop

And be discarded in favour

Of a more elegant and durable timepiece.

I wear you at my waist;

I hold you often in hand,

And keep you beside me when I'm asleep.

I look at you more than anything else,

And I am always satisfyingly distressed

To see that you have progressed.

My old timepiece which my friends admired,

Had worn out it's gears and no longer

Followed the sun to the west;

Besides, I never really cared for its style,

And when its end of time arrived,

Instead of living out my days frozen in space,

I left its dusky dead world,

And found you,

The reliable new watch.

I will keep you with me even

In the shadow of my grave marker -

And ever after,

Past the end of time.

***
How I Became Insane (An Insomniac's Tale)

This has been going on for months. Age-related insomnia runs in my family – my mother would compensate by going to bed very, very late, in the wee hours, so that she would awaken at a reasonable hour. Still, she was exhausted through most of the day, and her naturally expressive and friendly disposition was blunted for the most part into a taciturn and standoffish ice-persona. Ancient women in various parts of the world apparently worshipped the moon at night; I think they must have had insomnia from having too many children and brutish husbands – or, night was the only time they could get any tranquillity into their lives. Peace be with the moon.

Me and the moon. I've taken recently to gazing out my bedroom window, sitting at my desk with my chin cupped in my palms, wistfully wondering if anyone is out there in our dazzling night skies. What are their lives like? Have they found international peace? Is it night where they are? What do they do when they can't sleep? Maybe they pray to their moons or trinary suns – or maybe they don't get insomnia at all.

Life must be blissfully, elegantly beautiful around the stars of Cygnus; on the worlds of Andromeda they're probably chained to desks all day. They hunt crystalline spiders in Orion, and in Taurus they're subjected to just way too much bull. What do they call the work week around Sirius – the "dog days." Around our star, known to the Galactic Network of Civilizations as "The Solar Wind," we send out primitive radio broadcasts that tell the peoples of the Galaxy that humans just love to hear themselves talk. They've tentatively come up with three possible names for our Earth: "Yak," short for yakitty-yak; "Politics Land," in reference to the main source of the solar wind emanating from our system; and "Gas Pass," owing to the jokes that go round the Galaxy about what our broadcasters smell like in the aliens' full-sensation holographic television boxes.

My days of late are even worse than the nights. After a scant two hours of sleep in the darkness, I collapse a few times a day into catnaps. What's it like after a little sleep for an insomniac – you're wide awake, but not mentally refreshed. There's a heaviness around the eyelids, and a grainy coarseness to the thoughts – they aren't crisp, clear and lucid. Not surprisingly, being exhausted nearly all the time, my normally good work ethic is erratic: I might get a lot done in one afternoon, and the next day put myself in idle and surf the web or jury-rig the hours away, doing nothing in particular and accomplishing little – but at least it makes me feel busy.

What can I do about my sleep disorder? So far, I've tried three non-addictive sleep aids, and none has worked. One made me anxious, another made me incontinent, and the last made my heart pound and race. My doctor is trying to persuade me to take mildly addicting pills to overcome this problem, but I really don't trust any mind-altering substance that becomes a ball-and-chain.

The worst thing of all is that my relationships are falling apart. The dog doesn't get twice-daily walks; the cats don't get their fair allotment of cuddles and sweet talk; I'm avoiding most of my friends because I don't want them to see me in such a dilapidated state. Then there's my siblings. I've always been seen as the loopy one of the family, and I'm constantly being spoken to as though I were a child. In normal times, I'm no crazier or more childish than they are – but reputations are earned in youth in families, and so my wild, wacky and aggressive teen years follow me to this day.

Recently, my two sisters have been acting afraid of me. They never did appreciate my sense of humour, but now when I make jokes they tense up and go stone-faced. They are letting me know that my humour is appalling {they find many things appalling that are really quite understandable and commonplace.} I suppose I'm provoking this reaction from them with comments at the dinner table such as "Did you know there's evidence of an undocumented atomic explosion in the Sahara desert?" They looked at each other with startled expressions and stayed silent. "Or maybe it was a meteor explosion..." I trailed off despairingly.

My sisters have never seen me when I truly am delusional {as I have been on two occasions in my life,} yet they are constantly vigilant for signs in conversation that I'm losing my marbles. Personally, I think they both have their own dream world issues to deal with, but I'm the one in the family that is seen as the nature freak and earth mother {those images of me are seen as evidence of insanity simply because my sisters don't relate to a profound love of nature. Anything outside their own experiences is "delusional," or "weird."}

I find myself, with all my mental fatigue, falling into a world of dreams that grip me; I am on the road to becoming ill, I have no doubt of that. Recently, my daily showers have become once every day or so; I noticed the other morning that I hadn't brushed my teeth in several days; and I don't want to watch the news because it now frightens me so much.

So, I have finally become insane. I had a talk with my doctor yesterday, and I'm going to try a mildly addictive sleeping pill that she guarantees will give me a full night's sleep. I imagine that I may sleep well into the day, and wake up refreshed and back on the road to lucidity and energetic living. The critters will be well cared for again, I'll open my contacts page and offer invites to friends I haven't seen in ages, the house will get a thorough spring cleaning, and my sisters – what do I care what they'll hold onto from this episode; it might well be the unalterable diagnosis of clinical insanity that they've always wanted to put on me.

There's a full moon tonight, and I think I'll take my hand drum up to crest at the end of my neighbourhood, paw away on the skin for a while, gaze up at the moon, and utter a prayer: Please don't let my sisters know that I've chosen to become a pill addict. Oh brother, I don't want to go there with those two. I could never live it down.

***
Brainwash

Gus Bovington sat down at his desk on the fourteenth floor of the business highrise and began his workday. As always, he began by meditating on the sign that was hung precisely opposite his desk and one meter higher than eye level. "Think, think, think," he told himself as he stared at the word in front of him. He began to think furiously.

He punched a few buttons and opened his inbox. He scanned the mailings and selected ten to save; the others he put in his trash. He spent the better part of an hour intensely scrutinizing the words on his computer screen. He prioritized his work, and began with Item # 1:

In a near rage, he typed into his computer at an alarming speed the following directive: Life is purely and absolutely about choices; we are all rewarded for right-thinking and behaviour, and suffer calamities when our actions are wrong-headed. It is erroneous to describe a misfortune in life as a "tragedy" when it can be demonstrated that misfortune is a consequence of bad choices. In this particular case, homelessness is purely and absolutely the consequence of poor choices on the part of the individual. Gus thought it through before he wrote his directive; it just seemed from the observer's point of view that he didn't think at all. It's necessary, he reflected, to empower ourselves through rigid and unforgiving choice doctrines in order to liberate the individual and prevent citizens from thinking that there might be anything unjust about their nation's way of life.

Item # 2: Gus felt particularly passionate about this subject, and he banged his keyboard viciously as he inserted this statement: We are all equal; there can be no doubt on this subject. It is a level playing field. However, in order to enforce equality for all, we must treat some as less than equal, if their actions are unjustifiable, wrong, or contrary to the common good. In light of this, those with minority sexual orientations must be considered less than equal in regard to their sexuality. That is, they must be denied the same rights, freedoms and privileges accorded to the heterosexual majority. We do not say that they are less than equal; we simply deny them full equality. After all, he thought, these sexualities are obviously unnatural.

Item # 3: There is a God; and that God creates people who will sin, and then punishes them for sinning; as well, God may punish the sinner's family, or neighbours, in accord with God's will. God rewards the good, and punishes the wicked, as they are judged in His eyes alone. It had always been Gus' experience in life that bad events are preceded by some sin against God; therefore, it was true to him.

Item # 4: This directive was issued on a daily basis by Gus; it was central to the operating of his industry: A fact is a piece of knowledge held to be absolutely certain. A fact cannot be questioned, refuted, or challenged in any manner whatsoever. Those who deride facts are modern heretics; they are, through insinuations, to be described as delusional, appallingly ignorant, flaky, or antisocial. We can`t have the citizens doubting the very solidity of the walls which enclose them, Gus ruminated. It would be chaos and anarchy – a collapse of civilization would ensue – if people doubted the facts as they are presented to them.

Item # 5: Gus swelled his chest with patriotic pride as he entered his directive on this item: In the current war, and all past wars, our country was entirely in the right; our enemies have always been in the wrong. All of our war actions are justified and moral – there is to be no suggestion made that this is not true; as well, our enemy does not have the slightest shred of justness in his cause. We are the good guys, and they are the bad guys. Period. Imagine how many war efforts would be thwarted if the citizenry decided for themselves the rightness of our foreign affairs stances? Why, Gus thought, the international order would collapse – the bad guys would rule the world!

Item # 6: Capitalism is the best economic system, and therefore it is entirely, without exception, held as a fact to be a good thing – regardless of how it is regulated (or not regulated.) Criticism of capitalism emanates from the loony left – and, the citizen knows, the loony left is socialist. It is crucial that no relationship be implied between business-friendly mainstream media and their advertising revenues – it is paranoia to suspect that advertisers can affect a media outlet's editorial stance. If we questioned how wealth is created and distributed, or how workplaces are structured, or how information is disseminated and censored, then we would all be living in ghettos and gulags! Ha! Gus was thoroughly his enjoying his day thus far, and the entrée was still to come.

Item # 7: The proper relationship between the citizen and agents of authority is one of submissive fear to the authority on the part of the citizen. However, although we describe the proper relationship as authoritarian in character, we use the term "respect for authority" to signify that this is the proper relationship in the maintenance of an orderly, functioning society. Gus was fuming now – he was thinking of those punks who stick their fingers at him when he shouts at them, or so many of his classmates who were addle-headed and kept challenging the professors' unassailable doctrines. How anarchists enraged him, all in the name of unsupportable rights and false freedoms. His blood was boiling, so he took a big swig of coffee with amaretto and continued.

Item # 8: This one was penultimate in importance to Gus, and so he composed himself for a full second before entering this directive: The government is not opaque; that is, it is not secretive. We live in an open society, where all government activities are duly and meticulously recorded and reported. When secrecy is discovered and revealed, it is held to be an aberration in the workings of government, or an action of socialist conspirators. The government is transparent. "What would happen to public order," Gus spoke to himself quietly, "if the citizens suspected that the real power in politics lay beyond their reach?" Gus saw himself as performing a public service, and if only the citizens knew how lovingly he massaged their brains, he would, well, win a great national citation.

Item # 9: Always second last on his daily menu, Gus tapped out the next directive – an important digression before the final matter, which was the issue of overriding importance to Gus. It is plain to see that electoral democracy works very, very well. No improvements can be made in the design of democratic government; it is the end of political evolution, the political system perfected. No equivocation is allowed on this subject. Gus stopped for a moment to clench his fists, palms sweating furiously. He continued:

Item # 10: Direct democracy does not exist, and cannot exist. If the concept of direct democracy is to be mentioned at all, it must be derided as the worst possible anarchy. Imagine a mere citizen making important decisions for himself and his children, instead of leaving that power in the hands of a few capable, competent, knowledgeable authorities. After all, polls show that the average citizen is ignorant, shallow and entirely irrational. Direct democracy would be rule by the surly mob! Gus slid down in his leather chair, exhausted by the injections of venom he put into his inferiors' minds that day - but every day was the same in that way. Gus bit deeply into the consciousness of society, on the behalf of society, in order to protect society from itself. Despite loathing himself at a very basic level, Gus knew that his dirty work was the toiling of a saint. Citizens owed the integrity and safety of their lives to him – Gus Bovington. Straightening up in his chair, Gus hit the "submit to senior editor" button, closed his computer, and went home to his quiet house in its quiet neighbourhood.

The next morning saw Gus rise and follow the same routine he had since adolescence: Make his bed, brush his teeth, shave, take a shower, dress himself, then have a quick, nutritious breakfast. He then left his front door and ambled down to the corner store where he got his morning coffee. "Start your day with Utopia's finest coffee," the imprint on the paper cup said. He then picked up a copy of "The Dream," paid for the coffee and newspaper, and returned home.

In his living room, Gus swung his feet up onto the ottoman, coffee at his side, newspaper on his lap, and began to read the stories in "The Dream" that he had discreetly editorialized within. It gave him a feeling of great gratification to know that his views were being absorbed by the minds of so many of his fellow citizens, and that those opinions were presented to the readers as unchallengeable positions. It was a war for minds and hearts, and he was one of the generals; "Owning a newspaper," Gus thought to himself, "has got to be one of the most powerful positions a person could have in this world."

Gus then glanced over at the bookshelf in his living room which held row upon row of his most cherished books going back to his childhood days, and which he frequently consulted. With a broadening smile and a song in his heart, his gaze moved over to the portrait of his parents, who had always promised him that the world would be his, if he only listened to them and followed their instructions. He was where he always had wanted to be, and no life could be better for Gus Bovington, owner of "The Dream."

***
I Had Always Been So

At most times, I suppressed thoughts about my true sexual identity out of my consciousness – after all, when you're living a very deep lie, you can only keep your sanity by pretending, even to yourself. This one time, though, I was very powerfully and lucidly thinking of my real desires for a mate and a family: I was sitting in the living room with my husband of three months, feet up on the cherry-red ottoman, holding my belly and compulsively clenching my fingertips deep into my flesh. I was reflecting on the agreement I had made with Nate to start trying to get pregnant. It's not that I hated men (still don't, of course,) and I certainly didn't hate my husband. I was wondering if, after I conceived, I would beat myself in the stomach furiously in the hopes of ending...this lie. I wasn't sure who it was I loathed at that moment; it wasn't Nate, and I didn't think it was myself, or our future child; I despised the false life I had entered, and the consequences that my "little deception" may have on all three of us.

I knew even before I accepted Nate's proposal that I would divorce him someday, but hopefully not until the child I so badly wanted was old enough to comprehend and adjust. How was it going to affect him on that distant day of separation when he would discover that his beloved Michelle had deceived him in the most humiliating of ways (for both of us,) and what would the rest of his life be after that? What if he abandoned all trust in women, or lost his faith in himself, or what if he harmed himself with booze, or drugs, or a handgun?

What if I ended up ruining three lives with my "expected lie?" I knew that if Nate's or the child's life were to be badly harmed when I someday came out in the open about myself, I would feel like a criminal for the rest of my days.

It was a late winter snowstorm that evening. I put on my coat and went outside into our back country yard. The snow fell in sinuous spirals and loops all around; under the light of the back floodlight the world had a blue hue wherever it was covered in the newly fallen snow. I stood there for almost an hour, until I myself was covered in the cold blueness. I was frozen in a world that lived, breathed all around me, like a modern Merlin. I was lost in the ice of those times, with no prospect of a melt in my future.

**********

It was December 21st, a day of three occasions for us: This first day of winter was our fifth wedding anniversary; secondly, it was my son's fourth birthday; and lastly, it was Mike's annual Christmas party bash, where we arrived early for dinner and celebrated Stephane's big day and our anniversary before the score of other guests began to trickle in.

I was helping Mike and Marie put the tinsel on their living room pine with Stephane swaying the lower icicles as he lay under the tree. He had been gazing up into the center of the pine for the longest time when he poked my shin. "Mom, could you put a ball on the inside?" I leaned back and peered at him lying there under the lowest boughs; he was pointing up along the trunk. I went and got one of the few remaining ornaments from Marie's old wool box and placed it carefully into a tucked in spot two-thirds of the way up the tree. It was a gold frosted image of an angel that spun slowly on its nylon string; Stephane shifted excitedly as I smiled at the child's sense of Christmas mystery. "It's just like you, mommy," he whispered from the floor. Indeed – a spirit tucked away out of sight, always there but never seen – I had always been so.

Aromas of homemade pizza, lasagna and chili filled the house as the five of us sat at the table and began to dig in. Nate and Mike, best friends since their high school days, took big swigs of beer and piled up the slices of pizza on their plates. Stephane, Marie and I started with chili and cornmeal muffins. It was a poignant day, I reflected in the back of my mind as I chatted with Marie about the shopping expeditions we had been on in preparation for Christmas and Stephane's birthday, and as always, I wondered if my darting eyes were noticeable to the person across from me. I was aware that evading eye contact had always been the most obvious sign that I was hiding something – but did people really think so about me? I never knew, but I was stricken inside around everyone except my son. Being alone, and being with Stephane were the only times I could relax and live as though I had no secret.

The guests arrived by eight o'clock, and left by two in the morning - most of them quite drunk and overfed. Marie and Mike had gone to bed, and I gathered Stephane up in my arms to bring him to the guest room. Nate lay on the couch with a wool knit blanket up over him; I propped a pillow under his head before I went upstairs for the night. Poor Nate – already forty pounds overweight and definitely on the road to a drinking problem. Of course, I blamed myself for those difficulties of his, and so said nothing to him about them. A frosty wife was his curse, and as I climbed the stairs looking down at him on the sofa, I clung to the back locks of my son's hair; there was only one thing in this world that made my life tolerable, and I was determined that I would never let him go; Stephane groaned softly in my arms, and I took him into the guest room and put him down under the covers of one of the twin beds. Outside, it was a snowstorm, and the window was beginning to ice up around the lower edges. I drifted off to sleep with the most painful constriction around my heart. Secret worlds within us grow colder with time, and for that, there is always a price to pay.

**********

Stephane and I walked along the path in back of the house, winding our way through the woods. We arrived at the shed and took out several logs and lit a fire in the pit by the benches; he was fourteen now on this New Year's day in 1994 – I was thirty-nine. As the fire roared up before us I rubbed my mittens on my jeans and watched the breath from my mouth drift around the flames and disappear. Stephane had been released from hospital in time for his birthday, and the doctors had approved of him going to school for the second semester – he had lost the first to his illness.

"You know," I began, "the new meds are a lot better now. You might be a little groggy and sleep a lot at night, and you may have to watch your weight, but you can live a normal life now." Stephane smiled at my words. He was feeling sane for the first time since the beginning of adolescence. Schizophrenia could not – would not – destroy the life of my remarkable son Stephane.

He looked at me and gave me a chuck to the arm. "Thanks mom, you're the best." We had thought he was having an especially hard entry to adulthood – skipping school, drinking heavily, smoking pot, using LSD, becoming a class clown, and hanging out with kids that treated him quite badly. None of our guidance had worked. Stephane tried to kill himself back in September with a broken beer bottle on his wrists. The scars were inconsequential to him already – he was now glad to be alive. We both cried a little as we sat there silently by the fire. "Stephane," I said, "you know I'll always be with you, always at your side. But – you won't be a momma's boy!"

"No way, Mom," he agreed. "But can I live with you until I'm married?"

"Even after, if it's okay with your wife." I bit my lower lip and bobbed my head enthusiastically. "Stephane, this has been the best Christmas ever. Happy New Year, son." I hugged him, and the afternoon by the fire in our back wilderness was the warmest day of my life up to that point.

I went seemingly for years without contemplating my secret after that winter; my son's life was everything, and he needed me so very badly. What we discover as parents is that nothing, not even our inner worlds, compares in importance to the demands of a troubled child. The ice around my heart had gone numb – it was there, but I no longer felt it.

**********

"I'm so, so sorry," I told Nate in our living room that fated day. It was December 20th, the day before our twentieth wedding anniversary – I had told him I didn't want to go anywhere that year, and this was why – my big bombshell. "Nate, you won't believe this for a long time, but I didn't use you."

"I know you wouldn't," he choked out. "It's not in you to use people – but, when did you...realize?" His hands were clasped and pulled in against his belly. He looked away from me while I answered.

"Since my first crush in middle school," I told him as he nodded with a slightly astonished expression on his face. "But I've never even kissed a girl, and I know that begs the question – how can I be sure? I just am sure, that's all." He cried a little now. "Nate," I said as I leaned forward in his direction, "I married you because I loved you so much as a human being, and I knew you'd be the best father for our child. Please forgive me – not now, but someday – please forgive me."

"You're forgiven." He inhaled sharply and said, "I always knew there was something, but I never saw you even once look at a woman. I just thought you had a low libido, or that it was me causing it all." He smiled with warmth and irony, glanced at the Christmas tree to his side, and turned to me and said, "January 1st, you say? I can help you move to your new place, my dear."

"Thanks, Nate, thanks." It had all gone so much better than expected that day. We had a quiet dinner, and got drunk together that evening for the last time. Bittersweet is the release of separation, and I felt a warmth around my heart for the first time since childhood.

The next day I went to the airport to pick up Stephane who was coming home for his birthday and his parents' twentieth anniversary. I told him the news on the way home; he didn't seem surprised by any of it – he didn't even cry.

When we got back to the house, I went in and the frost had returned to my heart as I had a vision of Nate suspended by a rope in the bedroom from the ceiling light fixture. I always knew that when this time came – Nate was so sensitive, and so prone to depression – he might harm himself. He had been so reticent that day, with such an air of finality to all his sighs.

I rushed to the bedroom and swung the door open; Nate lay on the bed and didn't move. I went over quickly and quietly to the side of the bed. "Nate," I cleared my throat and strained to speak with a clear, calm voice. "Nate!"

"He's here?" my husband asked as he slid the bed spread down.

"He's here, and everything's okay." I watched as he rose to go downstairs and greet Stephane.

Twenty years of ice was melting off of me, and I stood there wondering, when does it start getting better?

I moved in with my son in Montreal in the New Year, and spent the next four years being his cook and housekeeper while he finished his five years honours in chemical engineering. I realized in those days what it is to have a best friend. Life was getting better.

**********

I'm fifty-six now, having moved to Navan outside Ottawa in 2005. I live down the highway from Stephane and his wife of three years, Kirstie. I have a granddaughter, a job in town, a nice little rancher, and a girlfriend, Becky, who's moving in with me today. Nate's remarried, in great shape, happy, and a social drinker. Stephane's latest med works miracles for him – he now has no side-effects, and nobody around here knows that he has schizophrenia.

The only dark cloud on the horizon of my life is my joint and bone health; I have severe osteoporosis in my pelvis, as well as rheumatoid arthritis. What's life, though, without some anguish to look forward to? It's just necessary drama.

All in all, though, I consider myself to be the luckiest of people in these times; Fortune has smiled on me. Becky, bless her heart, is going to do the heavy work in the gardens – she's my ideal mate, and my once and future champion (she won me from someone who wanted to live in the closet.) Becky has also had a family – two daughters – and we are life mates, and soul mates. Things couldn't be better for me.

The sun is rising right now, and melting what is hopefully the last snowfall; it is the first day of spring, and Becky and I plan on being married exactly one year from today, if everything works out in our sharing a home. Stephane is to be our best man, and Becky's two daughters will be bridesmaids. Nate will be there, though Becky's ex won't be – he's still bitter six years after their divorce.

Whatever becomes of this world, I will leave it with sadness, now that it is a good place for me. I hope that day is long in the future, but if I should die this day, I will go having completed the journey to simply becoming myself – the person I had always been.

I am happy, at long last.

***
Passion's Energies

Eternity's Children

Dawn's mother lifted her gingerly up onto her hip and carried her for a while; they were approaching the summit of the hill. Dawn's older brothers dodged about in a game of tag under the spotless blue sky that seemed to go on forever into space. When they reached the crest of the eight-hundred foot hill, Dawn's eyes swelled with astonishment at the sight of yet another hill across a valley – and beyond that, another hill, and another, and yet more, seemingly on into infinity. Dawn swallowed hard and held more tightly to her mother. "Mommy, how many hills are there?" she asked, confounded by the notion of hills going on into the distance forever. "What?" her mother grunted, taken aback by the seemingly inane child's question. "Oh – nine, I suppose," Dawn's mother offered in attempt to appease her daughter's burgeoning curiosity. Dawn could see that there were more than nine hills and valleys – in fact, far more than she could count, going on to the horizon. Dawn, the five-year-old child, was pondering infinity.

Weeks later, in the storage room at her parents' home, Dawn was peering into an old dresser mirror and the reflection from the wing mirror that was folded acutely by the side of her head. In the reflections, she could see herself framed within a larger image of herself, and within that, a still smaller image. The tiny images of her face seemed to recede into the distance until there was nothing but a small spot. Dawn's older brother Andrew had told her that the images would go on forever – into infinity. Dawn was contemplating forever again. She felt disturbed by the immensity of infinity, yet in an unquestioning child's way, she accepted forever as being some kind of supernatural time and dimension.

Decades later, Dawn sat in her kitchen gazing down at the most important person in her life who was at her feet. "Forever is just forever," Dawn told her son, Marc, when he had asked her how long eternity is. She had long since accepted her mortality, and looked forward to finding out after her death how she would spend eternity – in the cool dark blanket of endless sleep, or in another place, perhaps with others who had once lived as mortals on earth. From the simple yet profound questioning mind of a young child, to the comprehending mind of a mature adult, Dawn had mastered the seemingly imponderable question of infinity, and so could face this life and the hereafter with peace and serenity.

**********

Powerless

It had been over twenty years since Mike and Sylvie had divorced; longer still since she had discovered his affair with one of his coworkers. "I'll never forget what you did," she told him over the phone about that long-ago affair. "I hope you burn in Hell." She then hung up on Mike.

Mike looked at the now silent phone in his hand and laid it down gently. He had never stopped regretting what he had done to his first wife so many years before – not because it had ruined her life and destroyed her trust in men, but because Sylvie had always been an emotionally weak person who couldn't cope with life's hard knocks. He didn't have to become reacquainted with her to know that she had never changed in that way; he could tell, by her tightly clung-to bitterness that she was still the same old easily buffeted girl he had once loved. She could not let go of past transgressions against herself, and Mike knew that refusal to forgive is the choice revenge of the powerless.

**********

In Each Of Our Beginnings

Jean sat by his kitchen window gazing out at the children rushing to school in the October wind, playfully pushing one another as they chatted amiably. A lone fluffy cloud in the pristine autumn sky caught his eye, and he watched while the high wind blew it along over the landscape. A few hardy flowers braving the first frosts of the season brightened the neighbours' gardens in celebration of what had been a beautiful summer. He marvelled at these sights before him and even took note of the magical clarity of the freshly cleaned window pane before him. The world was new, mysterious, and the future beckoned to him to leave the present and past where they lay – his life had changed, and all for the better. Marie, his girlfriend of three years, had enthusiastically accepted his marriage proposal the night before – Jean's world was illuminated now with the powerful beams of meaning. Jean's life had just begun.

**********

A Secret Treasure Of His Own

Sanjay sneaked down the stairs in the hushed house at three in the morning; it was his nightly ritual, and as far as he knew, no one knew of it. It was his secret that he cherished so greatly, though the treasure itself was the magical element in his nightly forays. He crept silently from the stairs through the living room, through the dining room, and on into the kitchen. He hit the stove light, and stainless steel and white tiles lit up all around him. Up in one of the oak cupboards was his treasure – no one knew it but him. He slowly pulled the cupboards open, ready to stop instantly should its hinge let out a squeak. Inch by inch it opened, and no noise came from it. On his toes now, he felt around on the topmost shelf for his treasure, found it with nimble fingers, and pulled it out and down where he looked longingly at it for a moment. Teeth clenched, he now loosened the lid of the jar that contained his secret treasure, lay the lid on the counter gingerly, then plunged two fingers into the jar and pulled out his treasure. A brief moment later, peanut butter melted in his mouth and his mind swam with joy at the taste and texture of the treasure in his mouth. This was Sanjay's nightly ritual, and he would keep his secret with him all of his days, to his great and unfailing pleasure.

**********

Every Life Has Such A Beginning

The chances of being crushed by the throngs in this crowded world seemed extraordinarily high to her – many had met the fate of being brought to an end by an indifferent passerby. Nonetheless, she was determined to grow straight and strong, come rain or shine in her life. No one remarked on her great will, and nobody seemed to care that this was her one and only individual life; she had the bravery of a battle-tested soldier, and the stamina of a marathon runner. Though still very young, one could see, if one bothered to look, that though her beauty would be similar to multitudes of others, upon close inspection it would be seen that there would be no others exactly like her – it was a curious fate to have legions of brothers and sisters of the same kind, yet to always be unique. A cynic might have said that with so many like her she might as well been born of some kind of mass production machinery; a romantic would have countered that she was no less than the latest, greatest variation on an ancient and very successful theme in life.

Her future children were already in her plans; when she at last conceived, she would begin life anew, as though she had just begun living; and though the world is a crowded place, she yearned to have many sons and daughters – to be prolific was practically written into her genes.

When some distant day she dies, there will hardly be note made of her passing – a life of quiet obscurity brings with it the relief of no great mourning when at last we leave the world; others, including her children, would carry on with her spirit, and to be so remembered by the still living is the most and best that any of us can hope for.

What will be her lasting legacy? To those who spotted her in the crowds, it will be noted that she was a blade of grass like no other, though no greater or less than all the blades of grass in this world. Her unique and precious life will not have been for nothing. She was, it will be said, humble in origin and living and no greater tribute to a blade of grass – or a person, for that matter – can be made in the wake of their passing.

**********

Yet Another Modest One

To Melanie, boastfulness was the most obnoxious trait in a person that perversely would bring the person praise and admiration, in the times that she lived. "Oh, aren't I beautiful?" the boaster intimates to naive others who then remark on the boaster's beauty. Melanie considered that kind of manipulative attention-seeking to be worthy of no more than a young child, and yet the media and so many citizens of her times valued a person for their boastfulness, more than any actual skill or virtue or contribution the person had made.

Nonetheless, she would only sigh as she contemplated the life she was living and all the adversities she had quietly and modestly overcome in her life. She was far from being a beauty-ideal woman and carried a little extra weight around the middle; in times of obsession with beauty-ideals, she was both pointedly and by implication derided for falling short of physical perfection. She knew abuse in her childhood, at the hands of an uncle who would take her in private and curse that she deserved to die; the scars from this very ill man were still written on her face around the eyes, where a little unyielding sadness expressed itself in the crow's feet. She suffered the slings and arrows of childhood and adolescence in a society that ingrained in so many of its children a destructive and very cruel notion of what it means to compete in life. She had been railed at by others throughout her life, and had been bent, but not broken, in the tides of ill competition that she was immersed in. Surviving the cruel torment and vindictiveness of the legions of insecure people in her community was in itself a great tribute to anyone who knew the darker aspects of her time, and yet she was no different than others in that way.

Melanie had always carried herself with self-effacing grace in her life, and through all the trials and tribulations of her existence, she managed to accomplish the following: She had married and raised three children; she had succeeded in a career that called for abilities initially foreign to her; she had mastered the art of good friendship; she made frequent and nearly unnoticed contributions to her town and neighbourhood by kind words and good deeds; she had acquired an encyclopedia of important and fascinating knowledge in her mind; she managed tasks that were beyond her innate strength, and inspired those around her to do likewise; and Melanie always loved, even though forces of indifference and hatred were palpable around her and any other who lived in those times and in that place.

When she passed, no public note was made of her incredible stamina, courage or dedication; her great gifts were shared in kind by so many others, and it was easy to forget how precious and hard-won those remarkable qualities truly are. She had been as flawed as any human being must be, yet she overcame those limitations with silent effort and concentration of will. She was a memorable and impressive person to any that knew her well, and yet it was her fate to become all but forgotten within a scant century of her death – eternal anonymity for one who never had sought praise or attention for her great accomplishments.

Will those who childishly draw praise for themselves through boastful words and behaviour ever see themselves and their vanity in the light of a truly mature person like Melanie? Will they ever know what it is to have her calm self-assured nature and essential dignity? Perhaps, if they were to boast less and emulate any of the multitudes of people like Melanie in this world, the self-aggrandizing would come to know what it is to be a real and authentic human being who lives not for the praise of others, but instead in praise of having the good fortune to have lived. Humility begins with awareness, and the great innate wisdom of Melanie and others like her is almost never remarked on in this age of pomposity. Melanie and her many, many soul mates point the way to the future for all of us, and for that we can all spare them due recognition and their measure of hard-won tributes.

**********

Right On Time

A grey acrid slurry swirled down the sink for the last time; blue-grey pollution permeated the walls and curtains as they had on countless occasions before. What had begun as a teenager's lark decades earlier had finally come to a necessary end. Jeff Van Eyk had just butted out the last cigarette of his life – a life that would turn out to be as long and fulfilling as a person could ask for. He had quit smoking just in time.

**********

Memories

It was a threadbare old trunk in the attic of Luke Travers' home on Roanoke Lane in Winchester, Ontario. It didn't call attention to itself, and only Luke knew the value of what it contained. As had been his habit in the two years since he had been widowed, he now climbed the stairs to the attic, sat in a plush old chair by the trunk, and opened it to look inside. He hesitated to touch the contents, they were of such great value to him – instead, he peered in and marked each item in his mind, as though to make sure that he really had shared in all that happiness over the course of fifty-three years of marriage to Helen.

The candlesticks were in there; a piece of their chocolate wedding cake; the first photos of each of their five children; Helen's old Sunday school New Testament; Helen's rings and pendants; her lacy peach blouse that she wore on picnics in her latter years; the running shoes she had been wearing the day she and Luke had met on the tennis court in 1957; and the middle pillow from their king-size marriage bed, where their heads would rest and their eyes locked after they made love.

Luke knew what it was to have been truly alive all those years with his beloved Helen, mother of his children and his soul mate on earth and in the hereafter, which he now looked forward to entering when his days also came to an end. "Lucky Luke," he called himself in his silent thoughts as he closed the lid of the trunk and returned downstairs to watch tennis on the living room television.

**********

The Lovers

They strained in unison as they reached the climax of their lovemaking; their faces were contorted with effort that ordinarily would have been painful. Collapsing into the bedsheets together, they lay alongside one another for blissful minutes before rising to dress and go to work. The sense of oneness they had experienced would sustain and connect them invisibly throughout the long day ahead, and throughout the many years of their partnership.

**********

The Tryst

Why she had done it, she didn't know. Her husband Phil was a good man and a splendid lover – still, a few minutes in the utility room with her coworker Josh had changed her self-perception forever. She didn't know if she was awful, or simply human and flawed. All she had done was forget her marriage for a few moments and experience ecstasy with a man she knew little about. He might have been a murderer or rapist, for all she knew about Josh, and it was that tiny possibility that would haunt her most throughout the remainder of her days. She had betrayed her husband and abandoned all decency, on more than just one level. She had discovered that wrong actions truly have no motive – they are simply the wrong thing to do. Such is the nature of all we regret in our lives. In truth, she was only human, and her particular action was no different in actual character than any of the amoral and unethical things we humans do on occasion. It was only a tryst that had brought all this on.

**********

The End Of Things

Sara loved to look up at the stars in her parents' backyard any time of year – even in the bitter skin-tingling cold of the depths of winter. Binoculars around her neck and telescope standing at her side, she gazed at the same objects in the sky year after year of her youth, never bored by their beauty. She imagined a time and place, perhaps around another galaxy, when the remaining people would reflect on the entropy-death of the Universe, enter fantastic machines, and escape into another Universe, where people could carry on generation after generation, and so on forever. She didn't care much about the scientific details of her fantasies, nor did she share her imaginings with anybody. They were simply part of what formed her over the years into a person who profoundly and passionately believed in a good future for humanity. She had wilfully but innocently created within herself the very spirit of her people, a spirit that has always been with us, and owing to the legions of philanthropists like Sara, might always be sustained as long as life can exist. Sara saw humanity as good, on the whole, and that made her different than many others who can only see flaws in human nature. She knew love at its deepest level, and it would ethereally emanate from her throughout the days of her existence, to the great benefit of all. Sara had discovered the meaning of her particular life.

***
Horizons Around Us

I Was Turning

In order to reach that ephemeral state,

Where I could at last just be,

I had to wring myself of false notions,

And learn to become.

Sailing the uncharted waters that were my life,

I crashed onto a paradise atoll;

There a healer dispensed his wisdom

In words like "connection" and "universal being."

From that my green heart soon inclined itself

To see.

It heard the thrums of other hearts around,

In people, animals, plants and the rocks;

My heart came to know no separations -

These convenient lines between us and things

Are but the gossamer threads of illusion;

And so I joined the One.

Next the sky opened above me to reveal

A myriad of lights that shone down from heaven;

And it was heaven now in my grasp,

And the stars were truly eternal and unchanging.

I joined that One,

And had found Meaning.

Finally I sailed to the edge of the world,

And saw the waters leave in a great fall;

Perilously close my ship came to the edge of all things,

And I knew that all ships, rudders and headwinds or not,

Eventually are carried by the currents of Time

To their worldly end;

What lies beyond the world's edge is anybody's guess -

But our days are numbered at birth,

And so we must struggle to live within the confines

Of mortal existence;

I became One with Time that day my life

Flashed before my eyes,

And I now had a trinity of eyes with which to see.

One eye sees all that is held separate by the senses to be truly One

In connection;

Another eye beholds the heavens and sees that Time has no

Horizon;

And the last eye sees that our time is but an infinitesimal bit

In the sea of Time itself.

I am One.

I am of something infinite and eternal.

I have an end.

So,

It came to pass,

That I could now just be.

**********

The Cat Knows This

There is something that is elsewhere unseen within a cat,

That can sense things both fateful and opportune.

A cat just knows what it is to be alive,

And so takes care to frugally delay its ninth,

Ultimate ending.

What the cat knows, yet

Cannot express,

Is that this is all there is, and beyond this life

No more.

A cat can prove this to herself without need

For an algorithm;

A cat feels this in its sinuous spine as it tingles in a tree;

A cat looks mournfully on those who don't know what it

Knows -

A dog's life is the lot of those who believe

There really are second chances.

**********

Not Truly Free, But On The Loose

If only we used that precious word only for things that are

Given away.

What can be free, when life is duty and obligation?

What can be free, when there is a spectre named Death?

What can be free, when it must eat and drink and sleep?

No -

We are not,

Cannot be

Truly free.

What we are though, if we care to shed the cruel bindings put on us

In this world -

Is on the loose;

Wild;

Feral;

Beasts of Nature,

Turned out into the world of people.

And so I carry my own leash,

And attach it to my children,

My lover,

The ones I love

And all the ones I must render tribute to.

Then, perhaps under the cloak of night,

Or, better still,

In broad revealing daylight,

I slip off the leash that binds me,

And I go on the loose for a time;

And this time on the loose is the only occasion in life

In which I truly choose.

Do not tell me to be free -

I will blunder into things that do harm;

Tell me instead to go out on the loose,

And then my feral nature will have its repast,

And I may be happy for a time,

And, it is free of charge.

**********

The Dictator

Who has not indulged the fantasy of chaining humanity

To the gears of a state machinery,

And causing all that happens in the land?

How happy they would be, if only they did my bidding

And saw things as I do,

And loved me, their dictator.

Misery is to be held by the neck,

(A vulnerable position,)

And guided through a maze of an

Empty-headed lunatic's design,

And told this is meaning,

This is wisdom,

And this is love.

Better a beast in the wild, by far,

Than a pawn in the dull imaginings of a tyrant.

Let the revolutions against despots roll out and onward,

So that others may slip into the wild

At opportune times.

**********

Mystery

What lies beyond the senses,

Beyond measuring instrument,

Beyond proof or disproof -

That is Mystery,

And it must be explored

In a life well-lived.

**********

Would That The Fool Could Teach Her Ways

They are the happiest of all,

Yet their ways are scorned by the prudent and pragmatic;

Risk – perhaps even against hopeless odds -

Is what pulls them into swirling waters

Where they submerge -

Perhaps into Atlantis,

Or maybe they run short of breath and struggle back

To the surface.

They are always wet, these fools,

And their frowns are for those who cannot truly take chances;

The fool wants to share her joy,

Yet others only tell her to grow up -

And that is your problem!

The fool shouts to prudence -

You have grown up

And away

And lifeless.

The fool then slides herself yet again into the deeps,

Perhaps to never return,

Or, more likely,

With yet more of the treasures of Life.

No wonder we envy the Fool.

**********

Horizons Around Us

The key to this life is the circle -

Around us a circle of loved ones,

Then a circle of community,

Then the Great Circle of the globe:

Humanity.

And circles, it is noted, go on forever,

Unless a cruel fate cleaves it at some point -

Yet, yes, its potential is eternal,

And so we can stand,

And if we look up,

And turn in our own circle -

We can see that the horizon goes around each of us

Forever.

I will but choose a course, and walk toward the horizon

To discover what is there

And along the way -

Yet again, from there I will perceive

A new horizon,

Beckoning me to explore once more

By land, or by sea or by the way of the birds;

A life of horizons unseen

And left without investigation,

Is a life not truly lived.

In the circles of horizons around us, we are joined;

For it is also true of circles that they encompass all,

And all within are as one.

Perhaps, though I approach this horizon with caution,

It is possible to be truly free,

If ever we march on a path

To the eternal, encircling horizon.

**********

Chaos

I say to myself sit;

Now I say remember;

Next I will say pine tree;

And on it will go all the days of my life.

Not once will I know what it is to live

(or not live)

In an orderly existence;

How could it be so when my very thoughts,

My heart of hearts,

My soul, perhaps,

Seem to roll dice

As they hand me my arrows.

Oh, I place knife beside spoon,

Pay bills before I indulge -

There is a place for the

Imposition of superficial order in life.

It has been said, by the sage,

That measured as creatures

We are all irrational -

And so, to the naive,

Or Draconian,

We may seem insane.

But more than irrational we are -

We are living, breathing chaos,

Going about our lives,

Passing by diners and giving alms to the poor -

Somehow, in light of our lives,

The certain shadow of death creates

A needed constraint on chaos;

So, take comfort in death,

For it is the one thing we know will happen,

Beyond the twisted, chaotic pulses of being human.

We reason, yet we say jump,

Jab, jabber and jingle,

As though we are comprehensible

Even to ourselves.

**********

To Trifle, As It Were, With Life

Those kids who said I was a boy for loving girls -

They did it.

That alcoholic man who yelled abuse until he got his way -

He did it.

That holy roller who said I would burn by the devil -

She did it.

That man who flew a plane into a building -

He did it.

They did what should be impossible -

They trifled with my life;

They blew hot winds down my neck;

They stalked me -

They may even have raped me.

They disturbed me on my course in life;

Brought sorrow where there was no call for tears;

Burned the edges of my petals -

They took portions of my life,

And poured the substance out into a pyre of their making -

Ghouls they were.

So, philosophically,

One might imagine that in surviving

Cruel torment,

I have grown even stronger;

True, I am stronger;

Though never free of the impoverishment they brought

To my beating heart.

My heart.

**********

The Criminal

I have been on this earth since its beginning -

Neither serpent nor gullible woman escaped my eye;

Though it is certain that my children will sin,

I see no end in calling them criminal

For simply striving to be free of enslavement.

The bringer of chains

And false hope

And false meaning

Is the criminal set loose upon my children;

He has become the very serpent of long ago.

He is the bane of life -

He must be banished.

**********

The Opposite

An absence of free living is slavery -

The opposite of free living is stifled imagination.

Disturbed are they without gleeful random energetic impulses;

Sad, to be here, but not of the whole moving mass;

Grim, their prospects, for ever leaving the shores of existence

And learning to swim the currents of life;

Final, their deaths -

For no more opportunity

Will be known to them again.

**********

The Good Friend

Nick's heart would leap for joy at the sound of my approaching voice,

It was plain to see;

He was at my side through all the troubles of those years we spent together

In the grace of good friendship.

Without Nick, I would have succumbed to the tribulations;

Without Nick I might have died, in truth;

And so, it has been my honour

My comfort,

My privilege to have him now,

Body spent, in a jar.

It is not macabre -

His mere presence lightens my load,

Even in shadowy death.

There never has been,

In my humble estimation,

A better friend than my dachshund Nick -

He now knows peace,

As will I,

When my turn to leave arises;

And I hope Nick is there waiting

For the sound of my approaching voice.

**********

The Wish

I wish for all my friends

That they find the horizon bountiful;

That it fills the holes in their hearts;

That it heals what Time itself had no salve for;

That they know freedom is but illusion.

But, being alive -

There is no artifice in that;

As fluid as the leopard,

As darting as the kingfisher,

As thrifty as the ant,

As cunningly laid back as the carpet spider.

Yearn to be wild,

I would tell my friends,

And leave freedom for the gods.

***
Beyond Her Curtain

Asherah and Yahweh agreed in their marriage rite -

He would bring the day and She would rule the night.

Pizza and beer – a rare Tuesday afternoon treat for slick and successful marketing consultant Lonnie McPhee; he was off work all week on the occasion of his first home purchase. It was a starter home that was generally sound in structure and in need of considerable superficial work. The hardwood floors were bare and worn, the wooden staircase had been painted white, plaster needed replacement in large tracts on the walls, and the window frames needed to be modernized. Lonnie relished getting all the work done in six months, flipping the house for a tidy profit, and moving on to another starter home, where he would do the same thing.

If building a fortune was priority number one to Lonnie, then maintaining his harem of gorgeous girlfriends was a competitive second. He wasn't blessed with extraordinary natural good looks, but he was in great shape and knew how to appear both relaxed and stylish. He was past the point in his life of going through one girlfriend after another – he now wanted a tight cluster of women at his disposal, and he now had the income and property to string them along with treats, dinners, gifts, bouquets, as well as the ever-enticing hints that each particular woman just might be the one he would settle down with.

It had occurred to Lonnie that all of his steady girlfriends were obviously gullible in relationships – they bought his innocent bachelor routine, hook, line and sinker. He knew that he was something of a cruddy guy for manipulating these vulnerable people for his vanity (and for the sex,) but he decided that using women was just his particular flaw. He thought that, on the whole, he was above average in character, and that strong men like him just naturally built harems of lovely women for the man's vanity and public glorification (and the sex.) He was living the perfect bachelor life, as far as he could see – and Lonnie, it might be said, didn't see very clearly. He carried about in his head and heart far more than his share of blind spots.

Why was he so frequently angry? he would ask himself on occasion - "Oh, it's just because I'm a type-A personality," or "I'm just having a bad day." He could see that he a multitude of nervous tics in his behaviour, and that there was a boiling rage within him that he could barely contain, but Lonnie thought of those traits as nothing more than the consequences of a high-pressure career and the edgy lifestyle he pursued. That fear is the ultimate cause of anxiety and anger was a point of view he knew of, but didn't subscribe to. Lonnie McPhee, twenty-nine years-old, was a high-performance machine hurtling down a highway with no particular destination and little chance of avoiding, someday, a tragic and possibly fatal crash. Even the myopic Lonnie could sense that he just might be going nowhere fast, but he hadn't a clue what to do about the prospect of a dreadful future.

Here was Thelonius Albert McPhee, upwardly mobile heart-breaker, ensconced in the charming and deceptively vibrant neighbourhood of James Bay in Victoria, Canada; he was but a small part of the seething mass of humanity on the earth; he was, one could say with only a little exaggeration, typical of what was wrong with humanity's overall character in the early twenty-first century. He was exceedingly materialistic, emotionally underdeveloped, pleasure-obsessed, and perversely proud of himself. The pizza was gobbled down, another beer opened, and Lonnie went around the freshly-furnished house admiring his latest toy – the home he lived in.

**********

Lonnie's house was on Battery Street: A quiet, floral lane one block from the beach. He knew the area quite well, as he often went down to the pebbled sand to sit on the driftwood, shirtless, and wait for a passing single woman he could pick up. In behind his house on the next street over was another small home on a small property. Lonnie stood in his bedroom window and gazed across at the house, looking for a sign of who might live there. The gardens were overgrown, but in full bloom. Rusty old lawn furniture sat in a circle on a small cobblestone patio. The external paint on the house was peeled and chipped all over. The shingles on the roof were curled up at the edges, and a few were missing. The lawn was freshly cut and weeded, though, so the place looked lived in. Lonnie sized it up as an older couple's home – an older couple who just might appreciate a friendly visitor and helping hand. He decided he would keep an eye on that backyard, and introduce himself as soon as he saw someone there. After all, to Lonnie, neighbours just might be useful sources of favours and information – and an older couple might bequeath a little do-re-mi to him in their will. Opportunity was everywhere in Lonnie's view of the world.

For now, though, he hooked up his computer and browsed his collection of erotic ebooks (filed under his TRANSFERS library,) and chose one of his favourite themes – a taboo incest story about a brother and his step-sister. Lonnie had no actual sister, but if he did have one, this was his fantasy. He made the miscalculation once of showing his erotic ebooks to a girlfriend, who told him that they were pornographic, not erotic, and that his taste in literature was at the level of a thirteen-year-old. She shook her head ruefully and excused herself from his apartment, never to be seen again by Lonnie. He considered his collection of erotica to be proof that he was sexually progressive and liberated, though he never again revealed his library to anyone.

With an overfull belly and half a six-pack in him, Lonnie lay back in his bed after a few moments and passed out into a dreamless sleep that would last several hours. When he awoke, the sun had just gone down, and he could see lights on in the house behind his backyard. He decided to straighten himself up, grab another beer, and go sit on his back steps in hope of meeting his new neighbours; besides, he was in the mood for a cigarette, and didn't want his profits affected by smoke smells in the house. Jumping out of his bed, he headed to the washroom, downstairs and out to his back step, beer and cigarette pack in hand.

He didn't have to wait long. He had only lit his cigarette and taken a first puff when the screen door in the back of his neighbour's house swung open. A deceptively spry ancient woman appeared in a blue denim jumpsuit and yellow button-down shirt. Her hair was straight and white and the ends of her hair stirred in the gentle evening breeze. She immediately looked over at Lonnie and waved. "Hello, neighbour," she crowed to him, and walked briskly towards him.

Lonnie leapt to his feet and made his way to the back fence. He was struck by her straight white teeth and sparkling green-brown eyes. She was quite tall – as tall as Lonnie, and as she extended her sun-scaled hand to him, he thought she would have been datable, had she been about sixty years younger. "Hi – I'm Lonnie," he extended his hand and they shook amiably. She held on to his hand a little longer than he expected she would, and the invigorating warmth of her greeting filled him with discomforting feelings – he felt like he wanted to cry.

"Lonnie – I'm Gaya, and I am so pleased to meet you." She turned her head towards her house. "Would you like to join me inside so we can get acquainted? I'm so very bored these days, with nothing to do but watch this old house of Bert's."

Lonnie's eyes burst open at the revelation that she was only a house-sitter – perhaps she could use some company and some help around the house. "Sure," he replied, throwing his cigarette onto his lawn. "Do you mind?" he asked Gaya as he grasped the wrought iron fence and propped one running shoe on the point of a rung.

"Oh, not at all, Lonnie. Follow!" He hopped the fence and went up into the house a few steps behind her. As they went in, he could detect the aroma of fine cigars in the back room. The smell intensified as they passed through a tiny kitchen into the living room. Old-fashioned floral-print chairs and a chesterfield were placed impeccably on a well-maintained dark hardwood floor. It was the very picture of what would be cozy and intimate for people who had grown up in the Great Depression.

"So, Lonnie," she began as she sat in a chair opposite Lonnie on the chesterfield, "you want to be a saviour. "

He looked at her with narrowed eyes for a moment and was planning a quick escape. "Uh, well, I guess the world needs one, but it's not in my plans..." he trailed off, uncertain of how to deal with a person who seemed to have some sort of dementia. Her eyes continued sparkling in the lamplight, and their lucidity struck Lonnie – perhaps the clear character of her eyes was in fact a symptom of insanity.

She smiled broadly and swept a strand of hair back off her deeply lined cheek. "Oh! Lonnie – don't look like that!" she crowed. "I'm only testing you – and, it's true, I'm not like anyone you've met. You want to know something, dear?" She leaned forward in an expression of jovial commiserating, "I've been waiting for you – yes, you, Lonnie."

He could no longer conceal his unease and exhaled sharply while rubbing his hands together; his eyes gazed toward the back window – he was clearly about to excuse himself. "I can't stay long, Gaya – I've got a lot of work to do this week, so maybe - "

She cut him off now. "Lonnie – it's Thelonius, isn't it? I would prefer that, if you don't mind." He shrugged and nodded while biting his lower lip, holding back the urge to dismissively say whatever. "Let me back up now, and tell you a little of why I'm so different."

Lonnie slumped back in the chesterfield with a manner of defeat. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night, so he focused on putting himself in his best sociable frame of mind. "Thelonius, I'm even much older than I look to you," Gaya began, her hands cupped together in her lap and a serene expression on her face. "Now, I'll confess, I don't know people that well, and that's why I've decided to come here and get to know at least one person very well – and that person is you, Thelonius." She nodded to confirm to him the dizzying thoughts that were racing through his head – she meant it when she said she wanted to get to know him very well.

"What have you done over the years, Gaya?" he asked of her as he leaned forward and played his enthusiastic conversationalist routine.

"Oh, I've been in other worlds, tending my landscapes and gardens and cornucopias. I've been so busy, I haven't taken the time to get to know any people – and so, that's why I'm here now."

Practised poker-face or not, Lonnie's eyes revealed his thoughts at that moment – she was clearly insane, yet had not yet said anything outright delusional. Maybe she is just different than other people – an eccentric, he told himself. He was a natural actor, and he was stepping into the role of curious and flattered new acquaintance; he could only hope that this would be the only occasion he would find himself alone with Gaya. "Please continue," he said while extending a hand that was beckoning for her words.

Her smiled broadened as she said to him with a confidential air, "I'm something of a medium, Thelonius – a psychic; a clairvoyant; a mind-communicator." Lonnie was atypically speechless now, but he smiled gamely and gestured for her to continue. "What do you think about humanity, Thelonius? Do you believe humanity deserves to survive and thrive a very long time in this Universe? Or, do you think that humanity's qualities fall short of what's needed for long-term survival?" Her face now implored Lonnie for a response – and that was fine with him as he had plenty to say on the subject.

"You know what I think?" he began with dark enthusiasm, "Human beings have wrecked themselves and the whole world. Look at all the addicts, the wars, the murderers, the paedophiles, the scum – they're everywhere. Look at the way we're trashing the planet. You know, honestly, I think it would be a good thing for the rest of the Universe and life on this planet if humanity just went away." His index finger jabbed downward now. "The world is a toilet, and humanity is what gets flushed down toilets." Lonnie collapsed back into the chesterfield, taken aback by his passionate revelations. He had never fully faced or confided his feelings about human affairs to anyone.

Gaya smiled back at him sympathetically. "It's natural to see the world that way when there's so much blindness in the world, Thelonius. I'll make a deal with you now," she offered. Caught up in the moment, he leaned forward and put his palms toward her. "Okay," he replied without the slightest hint of sarcasm or dread in his voice. Lonnie was still reeling from the revealed depths of his passionate feelings about humanity, and he unconsciously wanted to take up her apparent offer to relieve him in some way.

Gaya cleared her throat and made her offer: "Thelonius, I will grant you three wishes – if they can be granted at all. Tell me what your first wish is, and it will come true by sunrise."

"I want to be happy," he nearly shouted. His voice lowered to a whisper as he hung his head in defeat to Gaya – she clearly had some kind of charisma or personal power he was unfamiliar with. She had him saying and believing things he had never much contemplated before. "I guess I want to be happy – that's my greatest wish." Returning to a calmer frame of mind, he waited for this apparently crazy lady playing the role of genie-in-a-bottle to respond.

Gaya nodded slowly and paused a full twenty seconds before replying. "A wise choice, my friend. Now, I cannot make you happy, but I can make you capable of happiness – you will do the rest. Sweet dreams, Thelonius." She nodded in acknowledgement that she was releasing him from her spell. Her eyes sparkled even more intensely as Lonnie slowly rose, eyes blinking back tears, shoulders slumped, and he headed out back towards his own home.

**********

Moonlight shone on the hardwood floor of Lonnie's bedroom as his eyes shot open, so gripped he was in his dream state. He had gone straight to bed after leaving Gaya's and returning home, and had slept until now in a complete void of awareness. He felt himself leaving his body and rising up through the ceiling, through the roof, and on upwards at an incredible acceleration – within a moment, all of the city of Victoria was but a tiny light on the dark side of the earth, and a crimson sunrise was appearing around the entire world. Mars, Saturn, Neptune shot by, and then he saw the stars of the Milky Way swirling as they spun about its centre. Next, he was leaving the disk of the Galaxy, and looking back on its turquoise spiral arms and orange central bulge – then he was drifting between galaxies. The spiral of Andromeda was majestically spinning with clusters of stars and small galaxies in orbit around it; the Triangulum galaxy with its vivid blue arms spun and gyred in the intergalactic depths. He then saw galaxies appearing in the distance, hurtling toward him, faster and faster, until it seemed that billions of galaxies were rushing towards his place in space. Instead of being crushed by such an imploding mass of stars, the stars themselves disappeared, to be replaced by a glowing fog of gas in all directions – and then a bright curtain of red hot plasma was closing in on him, and he was swallowed into the so-called microwave background of the Universe. The plasma grew brighter and bluer, then impossibly bright until, suddenly and shockingly, he was in complete darkness. Finally, he felt himself being pulled into the compact mass that was the seed of the entire Universe, and he was flung through it and out into a realm he had never imagined.

Lonnie had dreamt of travelling backwards through time to the very beginning of the Universe and was now in a space with an arbitrary number of spatial dimensions, and no dimension of time. It was a place that can be everywhere at all times – it was what he found his Universe to be within. He was floating in a metallic silver fog that swirled and carried glistening silver crystals about with it. He waited in this fog for what seemed an eternity until he could see two shadowy shapes appear within it; they approached in a meandering way to where he was, weightless in this silver fog. First one figure appeared – it was Gaya, or at least, the woman he thought was named Gaya. A similarly ancient man appeared beside her, and took her by the hand. He could hear her voice from both within and from outside his head when she spoke: "You can know us as Asherah and Yahweh, if you like, Thelonius; he is my husband, and we created the Universe." Her eyes sparkled brightly, reflecting the silver fog about her. "Or, you may know us as Mother Nature and Father Time. In fact we have no names expressible in human language. We are better known to you as He and She, or perhaps best of all, The Two."

All this made perfect sense to Lonnie in his dream; none of it surprised him, as though he had always known these things. "Thelonius, your wish has been granted, and you will awake a healed man, capable of great personal happiness in your life." Her companion nodded agreement and smiled. The silver fog dissipated, the figures before him disappeared, and he was no longer weightless. Lonnie was staring at the ceiling now, faintly visible in the indirect moonlight. He swung heavy legs over the edge of his bed and peered out his window at Gaya's home. He could see the bedroom light on, and beyond her curtain, she moved about, casting a shadow on the white curtain, never seeming to rest while Lonnie watched. He looked at the bedside clock; it was past three in the morning, and he rolled back onto the bed, propped his head on the pillow, and closed his eyes for the most restful sleep he had ever known.

**********

Lonnie was still hungry – for something – after he finished his plate of eggs, ham and jam-covered bagels. He had just washed it all down with a glass of tomato juice when he marvelled for the umpteenth time that morning at the incredible energy and enthusiasm he now felt. At the same time, he felt like he was surrounded by cement walls holding him in; but he knew he now had the strength to push those walls down and truly live. He had been awake for over an hour and he reflected that he hadn't sworn once so far. Normally he would have at least thought a few f-words by then, but somehow his mind was cleansed of hostile feelings. He tried, though, to see if he could swear when he wanted to: "Shit!" he said out loud, without any sense of release or satisfaction. It and all the other choice swear words in his mind had lost all their power to terrorize – and that, he thought, is the usual nature of profanity: It is the attempt to frighten something away.

What have I been scared of my whole life? He now asked himself. Loser. Being attacked or abandoned for being a loser. Far more than any of the physical threats in his environment, it was his deeply ingrained fear of being declared by others unworthy of acceptance and love that coloured every aspect of Lonnie's life up to that point, and he could see it now that he was free of that understandable but self-defeating fear. Love is unconditional, he thought out loud, having grasped the meaning and potential liberation to be found in that truth. Some things in life aren't unconditional, and that's okay – trust, for example, needs to be earned and maintained between people; but love, that is given freely and not taken away. Do we live in a world with little true love? He was pondering a lot of things now that before had always irritated him – provoked his fear and anger. He hadn't yet thought about Gaya and the vivid dream he had the night before. He was feeling a new pulse run through his being, and relishing every moment of the young day.

After he cleaned up his breakfast dishes, instead of plunking himself down in front of the television, he grabbed a pen and paper on a clipboard and began, for the first time in his life, to write poetry. He wrote poems all morning at his kitchen table – dozens of them. There were rhyming poems with perfect meter, variable-meter rhyme schemes, limericks, and free verse. He hadn't the least formed intent to publish any poetry – he found that he felt joy in expressing himself in this compelling new way, and that what he said in poems was lucid and challenging – and philanthropic. Is this who he had always truly been, beneath a thin veneer of imposed beliefs and behaviours? Lies are evil, Lonnie decided when his burst of writing was over and it was time to make some lunch. And lies create illusions in people's minds. Falsehood is the root of all evil, he tentatively concluded as he allowed his mind to turn to other, less strenuous subjects for a time.

After having lunch and cleaning up, he gave in to the urge to have the first cigarette of the day. He was a little dismayed to find, still, a powerful craving for nicotine. It seemed like an addiction he could now conquer, though, despite the reality of physical dependency; the anxiety and self-destructiveness behind his habit seemed to have vanished, clearing the way for a potentially longer and happier life. He knew he wouldn't be smoking many more days.

He spent the rest of the afternoon doing internet searches on his laptop, as his curiosity about the world was now insatiable. It was mostly the world of people that he wanted more windows to look through at, and he found strange, tender affinities for the images of almost every face he looked at – they were all so precious and strong, yet fragile and similar to one another.

Lonnie closed his laptop for a time and went to his living room window. People were arriving home from school and work in cars and on foot. He felt longingly for some to be out there – someone he could settle down with. It seemed impossible to him that he could find such a person, at least without intensive and aggressive searching. Maybe later, with Gaya, he could ask for a second wish. He caught himself now, believing that she had used some sort of magic or unknown power to transform him – his reason told him to hold that in doubt, for the sake of his sanity.

Nonetheless, he was waiting for evening when she might again be awake so he could go tell her of all the changes in him. He no longer thought that she was insane, but actually very wise and powerful of mind. Perhaps she had instigated the changes in him – maybe she was some sort of phenomenal natural healer. That seemed plausible to Lonnie. He opened his laptop again and began deleting his erotica library. He had trouble believing that he had once been so emotionally repressed and bored with his existence. He now wanted the real thing – love.

**********

On his third trip into the backyard after dinner, just following the sun's setting, Lonnie waved to Gaya who had stepped out of the back door. Her long white hair was tousled in the breeze and blew across her ruddy face. "Hello, Thelonius!" she called out with a wave for him to come over. Lonnie hopped the fence and followed her into the living room where they sat in the same places as the previous evening. Lonnie glanced out the window and saw the "For Sale" sign on the lawn. He decided he would like to find out more about her relationship with the owner.

"So, Gaya, I have to tell you, I had one fantastic day; the best day of my life, and I want to tell you about it later." He was gesticulating freely and expressively; his voice had taken on both rich and subtle tones.

"I'd love to hear about, dear. What is it, though? Are you wondering how I knew Bert?" She smiled at him from her chair, leaning slightly forward and nodding encouragement to him.

Lonnie was a little taken aback by her intuition – if intuition was all it was. "Oh. Yeah," he began, "How did you know Bert – and what happened to him?"

"I've known Bert since he was born, actually." She paused to let him take that in before continuing. "Bert was widowed eleven years ago, and he himself had a stroke four years ago. About eleven months ago, he checked into a nursing home, where he died thirty-three days ago, back on July 8th. His daughter Julia comes to check the place on weekends, and I'm here during the week, until possession is turned over to the new owners on Monday. So, this is the only week you'll see me, Thelonius, and I want us both to make the best of it. Now tell me, dear, what changed today after your dream last night?" She was again nodding encouragement to him, and cured of his ills or not, Lonnie was still capable of feeling confused and a little frightened; he betrayed those feelings with flickering eyes. "Don't worry, dear. Don't let my strange ways startle you," she said, assuaging his anxiety.

Lonnie began to feel himself falling under her spell again, and he recounted his day in great detail – for almost two hours he described his previous thirteen hours. He didn't mention the wish he had in the afternoon, that he could meet an ideal person to settle down with. He started into that subject tentatively -she had said the night before that she would grant him three wishes if the wishes could be be granted. "You know Gaya, if I could have a second wish, I'd like it to be this: I would like to meet the woman – or man – of my my dreams; someone I could share a life with; someone to marry and make a meaningful, fulfilling existence with."

Gaya smiled at his expressed wish. "I was hoping you would say just that. I'm pleased that you see possibilities with a woman, or a man. However, Thelonius, if you introspect, I think you would see that your romantic feelings for women, in general, are much stronger than those towards men. In short, there is a woman nearby that you would be perfect for, and who would be greatly pleased in lifelong marriage to you. If you like, I could arrange it...."

"Yes!" he shouted unashamedly. "Please Gaya, introduce me to her." He was openly pleading with her, ready to sink to one knee and beseech her if necessary.

"This is what I will do, Thelonius: Tonight, while you sleep, you will have an unforgettable dream of a woman's face; the face you remember when you wake up will be her that you could spend your life with. However, she won't be available forever, and she is difficult to impress – you must act in a timely and competent fashion in order to secure a first date with her. Again, I will make you capable of finding this ideal love you now seek."

Lonnie was biting his lower lip gleefully and rubbing his hands together in anticipation; he liked that Gaya was insisting that he earn this woman's company, not simply presenting her to him on a silver platter. "What's her name?" he wondered aloud.

"You will only find that out if you talk to her, Thelonius – and Thelonius, she will be the most beautiful woman you've ever laid eyes on. Now, sweet dreams, Thelonius, and I will look forward to seeing you tomorrow evening – my last night here." Gaya watched him lovingly as he rose from the trance and left the house blinking and exhausted. She knew he would return with news the following evening, and she had full faith in Lonnie that it would be the news she wanted to hear, and that he wanted to tell her.

**********

"Julia was exactly like the dream," Lonnie enthused to Gaya. "I thought it would be hard to meet her, or that she would be hard to approach, but there she was, eight-thirty-four in the morning, leaving her apartment building across the street on the way to the store – and her face, Gaya – not many people would give her more than a slightly cute rating, but she has the most incredible character and spirit in her ordinary expression – and everything she expresses is so clearly amplified by her eyes. The only thing really typical about her beauty is her hair – long, straight, lustrous golden blonde. Oh, and she's tall – five-foot-nine-and-a-half, almost an inch taller than me. Nearly nothing about her is what the old Lonnie would have considered beautiful, but there she is – as beautiful as you said she would be, Gaya." He was deep under Gaya's spell now, and everything he said was spontaneous and truthful.

"She also has a sharp wit and a powerful mind, doesn't she, Lonnie?" Gaya prodded him.

Lonnie placed a hand on his knee and nodded in vigorous agreement. "She's much smarter than me, and knows all kinds of things – she understands her education and what it's useful for. She's really amazing, Gaya. I've never met anyone like her. I really hope this works out, and we get married. I'll have you to thank forever, Gaya. You've really, really changed my life for the better. I want to do something for you, now." He was serious – he wanted to reciprocate in the grandest ways for how Gaya had healed him and changed his life.

She smiled and crowed to him, "You're doing everything possible for me, dear – everything humanly possible. Now, tell me what it was like approaching Julia."

Lonnie inhaled at the memory of his intimidation when he caught up with her on the sidewalk. "Hey there, I called out," he said, relating the story to Gaya. "I didn't want to make a come-on, make a move on her, make a joke or say something clever. She turned around when I called out and I just said, Hi, I'm Lonnie – I'm new in the neighbourhood. Can we get together for coffee or tea sometime? And you know what she said? She said she was off today, and that this afternoon would be good – and she smiled." Lonnie shook his head in amazement at his success in getting a first date with Julia. "All I did was trust my instincts and present my authentic self to her – and it worked. It was really beautiful, Gaya. Thank you."

Gaya beamed with pride at Lonnie for a moment, then turned seriously, unsmilingly on to a new topic. "I'll tell you now a little about how this Universe works, Lonnie. First of all, the other night, you stayed in your bedroom during the time-travelling dream – and yet you really did go back to the place before there was a Universe and meet me, and my partner. Simultaneously, you did both."

Lonnie held his breath and narrowed his eyes as he reflected. "That sounds a bit like some quantum phenomena – superposition of states!" he recalled all at once.

"That's right, Thelonius, it is a bit like that." She waited for him to catch up then continued. "This Universe, as we made it, and continue to make it, is both the product of spontaneous, unguided forces, and the product of Creator-intervention. You will find, when I have left, that it is equally plausible that I am Asherah, or that I am just a human named Gaya. You could prove to yourself either case - but you can't disprove either case. It is as though I intervened in your life, and, simultaneously, I did not intervene. Both are true. This way my partner and I can choose new paths for the Universe to follow, and none of its inhabitants will know."

Lonnie was a little perturbed by this implication of hers that even he won't know for certain if she intervened in his life in some supernatural way. All this was a secret he would have to keep to himself – others would proclaim him insane if he tried to persuade anybody. He wasn't sure if he now felt privileged or singled-out. He was singled-out for one thing: a necessary experiment with a human being by the Creators, as Gaya would next insist.

"Thelonius, you have been my guinea-pig. You were one of the most incorrigible human beings on the planet: Full of mutually-reinforcing delusions, and arrogant, and successful. You have crumbled at the chance to be truly sane and happy, and to share your blessings with others, beginning with Julia. Thelonius," she smiled broadly, "you have been an absolute success on behalf of your kind. You have proven yourself to be humanity's saviour – and simultaneously, recall – you are not a saviour." Gaya stood now and gestured for him to stand as well. She took Lonnie's hands in her own and said, "Now you must go; before long, I will grant you your third and greatest wish – the unspoken one that you have proven lies in your heart."

Out of the trance now, Lonnie smiled shyly and said, "Can't you give me a hint, Gaya? Just one little hint?"

She told him, "It's all about second chances, isn't it, Lonnie? Doesn't humanity deserve a second chance?" He left then, feeling her urging for him to go.

**********

The following morning Lonnie was talking to Bert's daughter who had come to do some final yard work. Lonnie brought up the subject of lights on at night in the house – was there someone there at night? Bert's daughter told him, no, there was no-one watching the place overnight.

**********

The next morning, after they had had brunch together at Julia's she and Lonnie were talking excitedly about the trio of big news stories: A pan-vaccine that not only immunizes against all viral infections, but cures existing viral infections. Secondly, catalysed hydrogen fusion – cold fusion, occurring at a few percent the energies of conventional fusion – had been discovered. The price of energy would drop at least forty-fold, with a virtually inexhaustible fuel supply and scant radioactive waste – no more fossil fuels would be needed, and human-induced climate change would be halted. Lastly, but by no means the least sensational story, was that almost every government in the world would reduce its natural population growth, such that the world would have half as many people in one-hundred and twenty-five years in 2013. Countries could continue to grow by immigration, and countries such as Canada and the United States were expected to have modest overall declines in human numbers; China and India, notably, set their domestic goals at fifty-sixty per cent fewer people at the end of the treaty. No draconian measures were prescribed by the signatory countries; tax incentives for smaller families would be used, and tax disincentives for larger families would also be sanctioned by the treaty. To many who had not caught up with population-pressure realities, the treaty seemed like the beginning of a menacing new world order, but Julia and Lonnie knew it was timely, and necessary. They decided to celebrate their new love life and all the great news with a small bottle of champagne with their dinner that evening, followed by a walk along the water. They held hands as they watched the sun set on old humanity, and as our second chance had begun. Everything – everything - would change for the better with the news of the day.

Lonnie never told anyone about Gaya, or even his rapid, profound transformation. In time, he began to doubt he had ever met her. It was logical to assume that during his three days of rapid changes he also experienced vivid delusions. His memory was not proof that he ever met the Creators, nor did he ever think of himself as "Saviour." He was simply happy that he, and humanity, had been granted second chances.

The End
Connecting with Robin Xavier Fontaine

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