1000 Days

In Colorado it would be cold.  The wind would be blowing.  There might even be snow.

I’d have lit the oil lamp and tried to resurrect the summer of ’92 with a mug of chocolate and a book.  I’d have wedged into a corner because the light from the lamp wouldn’t come at the proper angle and my head would cast a big blackening shadow across the pages.

But this is Oklahoma.  And while the evening is cold for some its only chilly for me.

The light I’ve chosen reminds me of an oil lamp because it dies off fast at the fringes and makes me feel like I’m in a globe.  Like the blackness beyond the glow isn’t just hiding things, it’s negating them.  I find comfort in that feeling, but I find sadness in finding that comforting.

“Can you have a feeling about a feeling about a thing?”

Focus.  This word gets applied to situations, life, tasks, work, relationships, and light.  Each time I hear it used or conjure its use myself to condemn actions other than the actual bending of light through lenses I try to figure out how this word makes any sense.  No, really I do.

You have seven things to get done today.  Each feels as pressing as the next.  If you don’t focus on one at a time you’ll feel overwhelmed and never get any done.  You may not get all seven completed by focusing, but you’ll get more done than by not focusing.  Focusing light does not, at all, operate this way.  Focusing does not line up all the rays and neatly process them one at a time.  It does not eliminate extraneous rays.  It does not draw a laser beam of intensity on a single item.

Focusing light takes all the stuff you have now and moves it so that you can see it all clearly.  In some case it moves the stuff away in others closer.  You still have the same stuff, but it’s at arm’s length instead of in your face.

I wonder if there isn’t a useful, more literal, parallel to be derived from the focusing of light for application in the non-light scenarios.  Instead of making a list, prioritizing the items, and digging-in in order maybe there is some way to draw those needs in closer or to push them away and find clarity in that effort.  At a distance needing a gallon of milk may hold no meaning and you find you no longer require the milk.  Jammed up in your face the source of your sloth reveals its obvious grasp.

Day 310

Tesca and Corla dashed along the deer trail contouring the west side of the ridge.  Tesca set the pace out front carrying a shield and Corla followed hefting the spear.  Their sisterly rhythm kept each girl’s foot placing and branch dodging well timed and as effortless as reading a book.

Not as much time to get this off the ground this morning as I’d have liked.  How is it other people write like the wind?

Day 309

It’s been busy.  I’ll try to get my groove on…

It was not right.  And it made Tesca realize everything was now possible.

Pure sunlight, beginning in the bluest heavens, coursed through the yellow leaves.  Autumn rose to its zenith today at this elevation.  The supremely yellow leaves dyed the light golden and bright—brighter than it had been.  The infusion of color then drifted softly to the frosty ground like a mote ignoring gravity.  The effect exaggerated the normally gentle contrast between the black and white of the trees’ skin.  In this light, in this sky, in this moment the trees, taken as a whole, appear straighter than they must really be.

Across, on the north facing slope of this glamorous high mountain meadow, Tesca lay face in the dirt behind the trunk of a fallen and rotting aspen.  She shivered as much from the chill morning as from fear.

The stain of a thing wrestled into the brilliant grove like a bull wrecking a make-shift corral.  Slabs of black bone and flesh protruded from the thing’s arms and legs like rocky spires.  Slick black fangs erupted from black lips.  Even from this distance Tesca could see those teeth drift up and down as the thing panted—she hoped her own frightened breathing silent.

The thing shoved two trees aside as it stepped into the grassy field.  The once golden grove lay broken and uprooted and murdered behind the thing.

Coming just those few steps nearer to where she hid caused Tesca to keep her breath.  It regarded the field upslope then down so long she thought she would burst, but she clamped her jaws tight and kept it a little longer.  Tesca closed her eyes and tried to convince herself the thing was a mere beast—an animal.  That it could not read her thoughts or find her with senses greater than sight or smell or sound.  Having made it’s decision the thing bolted downslope like a boulder coming loose of it’s moorings in a hillside.

Tesca’s breath broke the dam of her fear.  She heaved like a diver coming up for air.

“Blessed, that was close.  Huh, Tes?”  Tesca jerked around at the voice.  Her blood rushed.

“Sweet fukajimbo.  Damn. Damn. Crap!  Don’t do that.  Don’t do that.  Don’t do that.”  Corla, Tesca’s sister, just smiled.

“Come on.  Your plan worked.  We need to get back to Emva and Lee Lee.”

Day 308