The Drowning Pools

Paradise wasn’t lost.

It was forced to the deepest down; in the drowning waters where murk and mourning live. Strangled by the life it belongs to, because in the end, only one could live free. That’s how it is sometimes. A million words burned. A million worlds destroyed, shattered, put away, dumped as The Little Prince falls to the sand.

Rippled reflections of self, distorted by physics, the drowning arms lose shape, take jarring angles as refraction and reflection turn the body into something else. Something inside that’s not really self any more; staring back from the ripples on a once-calm surface. The eyes hollow. The heart beats but without passion. The soul eventually numbs because the burning can’t last forever.

Art is art. It’s expression. Interpretation. A look into what the world means to a single soul at that moment the piece was created. Conceived. Executed…then executed.

It’s a life form inside a life, as we struggle to break the confines of our understandings and misunderstandings to let free our interpretations of the world around us. To rip open skin and flesh, old wounds, and new passions, hopes and dreams because the body is too small of a vessel for it all. To give air to that which burns just beneath the skin.

Sometimes it is a mercy killing to save the life it belongs to. And that is the saddest of all. When the only answer is that drowning. It’s singular. It is solitude without solace. And it is the grief of losing the love of your life.

Cry, my Little Prince. Grieve from the deepest places. The drowning pools so deep inside...but never forget those waters. They are steeping a brand new you. A grand, unstoppable, force of nature waiting to reawaken.

August Friends

I am in a Middle Ages recreation group, and without getting into too many details, we have an annual gathering of about 10K-13K people who show up, set up camp, and wear medieval clothes for two weeks. I have been doing this for around twenty years. I've accumulated a lot of friends over the years; a lot of whom I only see once a year for those two weeks. I wrote this one night after losing someone I had known, and looked forward to seeing every year.

August Friends

Once a year, for two weeks our names are common to each other. We greet as though no time has passed; as we have always greeted with a smile and a “Welcome home.” For just a little while we even forget that there is a world beyond the August that we wrap around ourselves like a blanket.

I have known you for ten years but I may not know your real name. How many kids or grand kids you have. Or how you take your coffee. But that doesn’t change the fact that I look forward to seeing you. To the sound of your voice. To finding you wandering down a busy dirt street the way you always have. Those streets that have your footprints forever in their dust.

I may see you coming off the field of battle, or from a class. Offer to help you carry your things, visit a while. Maybe invite you to have a beer by my fire, or see you later that night at a party or two. Perhaps I will only see you in passing as we’re both very busy--but next year. Next year we promise to take time for each other. We promise that our August lives will slow down enough that we will have time. Time on our vacation to just spend being. Existing.

And then we will go back to our other lives. The ones where we make the money to afford this world. We will hardly think about each other, or the world we just left. Now and again, we may see each other referenced in an email, or a blog post and we will think “Yeah. We promised to make time next year…”

But eventually that year will not pass.

One year you will not come back and I will never see you again. I will miss you. Your warm, greeting hug. The way you look in the sunlight, happy to be “home” again with the families we have chosen as ours. I will drink a beer in your honor and think about you. Watch your boat burn on the lake. Think about how maybe we were always a little too busy. And then I will scuttle off to another meeting that seems important at the time.

Good bye August friend. I will miss you.

Skunks and Bombe's

Skunks

My house still reeks of skunk. It actually has for a while because my newest addition, Damndelion seems to love skunks. To death. So I have one skunk from a few weeks ago hanging out in a more prominent place than most people would find acceptable, but doesn't seem to bother anyone in the family. Of course we have a snake, so we move mice out of the way to get to the beef in the freezer, and when our guinea pig died in the dead of winter, we also put him in the freezer til we could break ground. Dead things don't bother me so much.

However, this skunk smell is newer. From yesterday. Damndelion got a hold of a young skunk and went nuts. I mean completely lost his mind, playing with it like he would with a rope toy. It was in his yard and that would NOT do. Tyr was smart. The second he smelled what was going on he let himself into the house...bringing with him a wave of extremely fresh and close stench. That's when we discovered the rope-toy game. Damdelion screamed, dropped the skunk and began rolling on the ground--I assume he was sprayed yet again, but there was blood now, so it was my turn. I watched to see if it was dead (hoping, really), but the damn thing stood up and ran at D. So, I found my weapon of choice and went to do the deed. I pulled the dog away, who was like "I'M NOT DONE WITH THAT!!!!" So I grabbed his collar and held him back while I fired. First shot was a kill--I was remarkably calm. Second was for assurance. The kids had been escorted to another place in the house, far from the goings on, so I had no worries about trauma.

And because I am NOT right in the head, I put the dead skunk on a fencepost as a warning to all the other skunks to just leave us alone. I think his much larger comrade will be joining him as soon as he thaws from my deck rail.

Now I have blue hair and I reek of skunk.

Bombes

Or more specifically, bombe glacee. Ice cream bomb that I'm inflicting on my daughter's second grade class. It's culture week, and one of the cultures was France, so I chose it, being that I know more about that than anything else (except my growing knowledge and obsession with Norway, but that wasn't on the list). I am gluten free (not that's its anyone's biz, but it's because gluten was killing me in one of the most painful ways you can imagine). I really didn't want to make gluten free crepes, and I refuse to make gf beignets, because the gumminess is what it's all about.

My favorite part of ALL of this ice cream bliss is a mother-daughter moment I had with my mom. It went like this:

Me: I have zero idea what to make that isn't a full meal, or a pastry.

My mom (Memere): You could make a bombe glacee. They're called that because they look like bombs; you put the ice cream in a mould, and layer it, so when you cut through it, you get a slice with pretty layers.

Me (to CoyoteCurls): Would you like that?

CoyoteCurls: YES YES YES THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!!!!!!!!

Memere (to CoyoteCurls): And you can tell your teacher YOUR MOM IS BRINGING A BOMB TO SCHOOL!!!!

Me: OH MY GOD MOM NO!!!!!

The kicker? My mother has her masters in education, and was in every level of education from substitute teacher through assistant superintendent. Is it no wonder I have small frozen animals in my freezer on occasion?

Anyway, wisely the teacher put us at the end of the day so the sugared-up kids will finish their sugar...er...ice cream bombs and head home.

And Now I'm Cold

And I have to be up early, and a lot of whining here that I will spare anyone who is reading this. I will post more creative stuff some day when I'm not overcome by sugar and skunk.

Thanks for reading!! If you ever want to leave a comment, by all means do so. I will read them, I just likely won't publish them because comments get out of hand fast.