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we'd be on a trip following double yellow lines in the middle of a long straight road and the road would become steeper and steeper and steeper until finally it was plunging vertically down and the stars would come out around us and we'd fall past the strata and then somewhere along the way another road would form on the side of the cliff and we would land on it and begin striding as hard as we could up what's now become a very steep hill and when we finally crested on top of the hill that's when we would be in the parallel universe.

Candles, scotch, a fireplace, eight soft red chairs around a round table and uproarious laughter in three different languages. An abandoned hand of hearts mixed in with crumbs of good bread. Eye contact and secrets and stories. Everyone's essential tribal nature has not changed, and all that made them laugh and feel loved was intact tonight as they rediscovered who they had been before everything changed.

She sits at the table across from the window open over the sink, the moldy dry dishcloth caught up with bits of an omelette and sausage that she had for lunch, smoking, exhaling at the window but not really caring; the frigid breeze is to cool her hot and clammy skin down before the next flush. An ice cube in the tall plastic cup at her right hand pops and bobs in the clear fizzy liquid but she pays it no attention -- she is perfecting what she thinks of as her absent gaze, indifferent, aloof and slightly melancholic -- but without benefit of feedback she does not realize that the look is merely vacuous.

The tedium only slightly relieved by the ever present possiblity of total and complete destruction should one of the thousands of critical systems fail, he completed his routine engineering checks, returned to his seat by the view screen and put up the latest E-novel retrieved from the databanks. It was a historical novel, about pre-spaceflight Earthers and the day to day struggles they encountered while trapped on the gravity well, the only place they had to call home. It seemed metaphorical of the same dynamics we experience today amoung the varied crews bound together on these interstellar behemoths we call home these days...."days"...what a retro term that was now. It struck him how hard it was now to imagine a time when our species lived out their entire lives planet bound, their clock lives regulated by the spin of their planet, their lives dependant on the clemency of natural random forces...forces that caused the destruction of the Earth's biosphere just 2 hundred years ago with the help of ingnorance, greed, and a black asteroid that went undetected till it was far to late to do anything about it. He wondered what it would be like to be on a planet, and wasn't sure if he could bear to live planet side, even if he had the option, which he didn't since the ship wasn't due to make planet fall for another 4 generations. No, he decided, despite the risks of a life in space, at least the risks were "man"agable...and preventable. With any notion of "indestructableness" a total farce out here, living in a tiny duranium bubble in space, people worked now for the common good, and our community was strong, our bonds tight. All of our lives depend on the diligence of each other, just as it always had been, but now it was obvious to everyone. It was a good trade in his opinion, giving up the bright illusion of "security" for the stark reality of "dependence".

mid november and i'm standing outside in the garden watching the bonfire i've built of driftwood and leaves. letters for kindling and apples amongst the flames. the last of summer is dropping through the embers, and there's that perfume again. it's in the shade, rive gauche, nearly viburnum. iceblink hangs in solid air, a blank ness along the canal waits to be filled and given the silence, the promise of frost. i welcome this as something else: the taste of windfalls moving on the millstream, a faint god's partial emergence through yew and oak.

the riverbank is darkening now and fades. the garden is recovering its creatures: blackbird and crow sifting the dead in the still of the damsons, pipistrelle and frog insinuating dusk. across the estuary evening is bleeding the trees. my neighbour's garden blurs to smoke and rain: i'm thinking that strembonita is over the eastern horizon, standing in her own garden she rakes leaves then bends to clutch a handful of twigs and straw to breath a life into our fire.

somebody's rather testy today

hahahahhaa :)

Every day the fish and chips place is the same: the light on the blue-and-white checked oilcloth overbright but friendly as though a rainfall just stopped, and the oily scent of bergamot and everyone quiet, reading their newspapers. And every day the notepad has only one line at the top: "Telling you something is like putting money in the bank." And the lodgepole pines climbing the hilltop behind, hanging on for dear life, unaware of the busy seaside drive filing past at their feet. Nothing comes but thoughts of the washer and dryer stacked in the tiny closet next to their bedroom and how they've never once eaten breakfast in the sunroom overlooking the sea because it would mean a climb up the stairs with dishes.

In a parallel universe I am a sound that you hear when strange things are afoot.

Not to mention that feet are almost always strange things.

Which is why Trish dosn't wear hers

One of my happy places:

A large old house surrounded by old trees with big porches and dim lighted windows. Honeysuckle permeates the air and wisteria vines grow up the low stone wall. Everything is quiet but the song of the crickets and the wind playing the trees like an instrument. The red on the horizon blends from purple to blue lighting up the wispy clouds with orange fire. It's warm enough that you feel like you could run barefoot and naked through the soft grass, twirling and laughing for no other reason than life in you and around you.

picture us as shadows on la moon. twins gathered together for warm conversation while down there the owls are shifting aside, unlocked from the visible world and the rain in the trees. each of us knows the other as water knows the bodies it transforms. see that colour? that colour is the colour of horizon. la moon's blue. the same blue as the blue of the blue room at the end of the mind where what we love goes on uninterrupted.

there he was. standing perfectly still in his own solitary world secluded from the rest of the city on a detached old bridge segment. the beautiful heron, viewing the chaos in front of him across the water as i was leaving the chaos behind me behind me. none of this has any meaning to him. beautiful.

.

only when i close my eyes i can see it. the true beauty of mother earth. her love makes me feel honored to take part in this, to exist. for years i denounced myself her beauty. but now i understand that i have as much right to be here as everybody else. just because i am. what a great gift to give, and such an honor to receive. me, humble me. just sitting here.

the sound about splits my head open. a rolling chime, so loud that my bones resonate.

upstairs, right now. hand on the railing, stairs two at a time - the rooftop door against my elbow (that'll leave a mark) and then out onto the silvered tarpaper, cool breeze against my face.

a fog has risen from the lake, to the east. cars on the highway by the lakeshore have stopped.

even the gulls have ceased their wheeling, and perch atop lampposts and rooflines, all facing east, all expectant.

sudden wind. the fog is torn into strips and flung skyward.

revelation:

hanging over the lake, hanging impossibly in the cool morning air, is a mirrored sphere perhaps a mile in diameter.

In a parallel universe, I can't imagine wanting things to be any way other than they are.