Kingfisher's Flight

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Reptile Friend

Early this morning, I dreamed that a builder/politician that I know in the Dreamworld was raising a caiman, which is a neotropical crocodile. Because it was growing with uncanny speed, this caiman was becoming rather famous. Joining the growing throngs of visitors, I came to see it. A young woman who was my friend’s assistant brought the caiman out of its enclosure, explaining that it enjoyed getting out of its living quarters *and* meeting its visitors. I stood with this woman, observing it from only a few feet away. I spoke to her about how intelligent it seemed. Its gaze followed her closely. Then its gaze turned towards me, and it grew with supernatural speed. Slipping off of the great stone slab where it had sprawled, it now stood on its two hind legs - about the height of a human. And, for the first time, the caiman spoke (telepathically). Addressing me, he said that clearly, I was a friend of his friend (the woman). And that my friendship with her spoke well of me.

First Love

Recently, someone asked to recall the best date I’ve ever had. To oblige this request, we must travel back in time nearly half a century. Back to the time of the hippies. In my youth, I attended a sort of hippie commune ‘free school’, nestled into the post oak forests east of Austin, Texas. Like many alternative schools of its era, it was run on democratic principals, inspired by Alexander Neill’s Summerhill School, in Suffolk England. One year, we decided to attend a ‘Free School Conference’ up Arkansas, where we would meet in Devil’s Den State Park to talk with teachers and students from other such schools around the country about peace and love and education. That sort of thing. So my teachers and fellow students and I climbed into our old, flower-painted school bus and made our way there. 

On my first day at the conference, I met a very pretty girl about my age, from St. Paul, Minnesota. Together, we walked hand in hand through the woodlands and meadows of the park. Even then, it was my habit to try to let my companion guide the pace and direction of our conversation. In this girl’s company, we fell into an easy, comfortable silence, simply taking in the beauty of the natural world around us. By evening, we were walking arm in arm. We spent the night together, bunked down in that flower-painted school bus. Quietly, so as not to disturb the others sleeping aboard, we explored love. Her youthful knowledge of the ways of love served for both of us, and served us well. The next morning, we were both too shy to exchange addresses. We joined some group outing on the second day - our shy smiles the only acknowledgement of our secret encounter. 

Shoal Creek

My childhood home was on the banks of Shoal Creek, here in Austin, Texas. It was a moody presence. In summer, even the deeper pools in the stream bed could dry up between rainstorms. Or it could rage in a mighty flood of muddy water rushing through the back yard. But more than anything else, I got the sense that my mercurial companion was far older and wiser than I, like some ancient friend, inclined to let slip fragments of reveries of times long past, or mutter to itself secrets of the natural world that I would struggle to overhear. I spent many hot summer days walking its course. I would make a weir to try to catch the bluegills, wrangled a giant snapping turtle, and encountered long black racers, myriad tadpoles and wary kingfishers. And every step I took was on fossil seashells from the Cretaceous - there to remind me of the Pierre Seaway that covered our Great Plains 100 million years ago. I could not have asked for a better companion.


Encounters with the Muse

In response to a friend’s question, I offer a little background on my encounters with the Muse. Maybe those who know this story won’t mind reading it again in this latest iteration. It all began in 1979, when the Chinese government opened Xinjiang - its western-most province - to the outside world. Journalists and photographers came in and recorded their impressions of this place in Asia’s heart, with its ancient oasis towns along the Old Silk Road, rimming a great desert at the foot of the Kunlun Range. In 1986, I was inspired to write a story set in this fabled region. In 1991, the Muse took pity on my floundering efforts and has been with me ever since. And what do I mean by that? It’s just a way of talking about the mystery. The way the words of the story came tumbling out of my head in a torrent of rhyming verse over a week’s time. Or the way the missing verses came winging in to take their place over the following twenty years. Or how the (now completed) story resides in my head like some exotic guest. Having given me this wonderful story, I get the distinct sense that the Muse wants me to do something with it. Accordingly, I have it available in both digital audiobook and ebook form. Clearly, she wants me to bring this tale to its intended audience. The problem is with acceptance. The genre she chose has been out of style for a hundred years. (And changing that genre is *not* an option.) Movies and Television are the storytelling titans of our age. And these behemoths have the zeitgeist of modern civilization fully in their thrall. With rare but gratifying exceptions, the modern mind no longer recognizes my story’s ancient, narrative form as a legitimate way to hear a tale. Over the years, I pursued many avenues - trying to fulfill my commission with the Muse, but have been stymied on every path. To do this seemingly simple task, I will have to change the storytelling culture of the ENTIRE CIVILIZED WORLD and revive the epic narrative form of storytelling. And it feels like this work could take centuries. Yet the Muse grows stronger within me. She seeks an outlet, and finds it in countless, tiny ways. I welcome her presence. She is by far the coolest and most mysterious employer I have *ever* worked for - paying her humble servant with riddles and rhymes and wheeling star-bursts. Such a companion gives me a certain focus and sense of meaning. I am glad of her counsel.

Note: I first shared this on August 4, 2017. Since that time, I have made progress in my efforts to share this story. Today, November 8th, 2020, I feel that I may soon reach a tipping point. Stay tuned.

demonofthewell

Hobo Hieroglyphics

Back in the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, hobos were occasional visitors to my grandparents’ home in Brownsville, Texas. As a girl, my mom remembered how every few days she would come into their kitchen in the morning to find some hobo putting away a nice breakfast of biscuits and bacon and eggs - his startlingly blue eyes peering out from a face grimed with locomotive smoke. Typically, my grandma would scramble two eggs in with a skillet of refried beans for her entire family’s breakfast, so the hobos (getting a whole egg) actually ate better than family when they came to her kitchen door. Something puzzled my grandma about these visits. They were always about three days apart, and never the same hobo. How did they know to space their visits at these respectful and cautious intervals? And how did they know to avoid the mean neighbor down the alley, who would have called the cops? At last a rather garrulous hobo shared their secret. The hobos had a secret hieroglyphics - signs that they would chalk onto a garden gate to let others know who to avoid, who was kind, and the last time the kindly woman  had been visited. Lilian Carter (Jimmy Carter’s mom) had a very similar experience.

Hound Dog & the Turkey Eggs

In the early 1970s, a farm near Austin had big, brown-speckled turkey eggs for sale. You could buy them from the Milo Minderbinder Memorial Food Coop for two cents each. There were often double and even triple yokers. Greenbriar School used to buy them by the flat till the Health Department made the turkey farm stop selling them because of some stupid rule. (They were nice and fresh). Folks at Greenbriar kept the flats stacked on the floor of the Main Building. During a time when dogs were allowed free run of the Main, we noticed that eggs seemed to be disappearing faster than people were eating them. Then one day, one of our human residents named David  happened to be in the building alone. A beloved old bitch named Hound Dog quietly slipped in the front door. She looked carefully around, but apparently didn’t see David. Confident that she was alone, she went to the flats, carefully took an egg in her mouth without breaking it and slipped out the back door. Stealthily, David followed. Down a faint trail, about 100 yards into the brush he discovered Hound Dog’s secret. A giant pile of turkey egg shells. It was here that Hound Dog ate her stolen eggs, safe from discovery. Smartest dog I ever knew. Needless to say, we kept the turkey eggs up off of the floor after that.

The High Mountains

In my dreams this morning, I visited the mountains. In the waking world, the neighborhoods of southwest Austin are set in amongst some low limestone hills - the gnarled remains of an ancient seafloor, uplifted by the Balcones fault system long before human memory. But in the Dream World, these are high mountains, with a great gateway carved through a cliff and other dramatic features. In my dreams, I have hiked in those mountains many times before. This time I hiked further and higher than I had  on previous visits. On this excursion, the clouds that always seem to veil the upper heights finally parted to reveal mountain spires cloaked in ice and snow. I woke briefly, then returned to those mountains and visited a colony of retirees who had settled there to escape the heat of Austin’s lowlands. I woke and slept again, to find myself still higher in those mountains, but also many centuries into the future. I was in a high mountain valley where accommodations had been set up for visitors from other worlds, who felt more comfortable in the thin atmosphere at that elevation. I was just beginning to get acquainted with these extra-terrestrial visitors when my alarm went off.

The Big Question

My mother Sylvia, in all seriousness, once asked me the following question: “What is the meaning of Life?” I was living out of state at the time, so I wrote her a 38 page letter trying to explain it all, as best I could. I really gave it my best shot, but she was not satisfied with my answer. So she posed the same question to her doctor. Her physician had grown up through hard times and difficult circumstances to become successful in her career, and was especially kind and attentive with her patients. Her doctor was taken aback for a moment by my mother’s unexpected and heartfelt question. But then she answered: “I don’t know. But I think it has something to do with love.”

The Prayer

When I was hitch-hiking through France as a 16 year old hippie in 1973, my ride in Lyon offered to put me up for the night - assuring me that his wife wouldn’t mind. Indeed, she did not! She served me a lovely supper, and sewed missing buttons back onto my shirt. They were living in the quarters of the caretaker inside an ancient cathedral, built over a running stream. They explained that the cathedral was built there for a reason. Centuries ago, a wealthy man was voyaging on a ship, over the rolling seas. A ferocious storm came up, and the wealthy man prayed to God to spare his life. He promised God that - if he should survive the storm - he would pay to have a cathedral built over the water. The great storm passed, and the ship that carried him was still afloat. So. The rich man kept his word to the ‘Herdsman of the Sun’. And he commissioned a cathedral that was indeed built over water - albeit over a small stream.