What We Shall See

I feel it now and my mind stops, fully alert. The slightest thing might cause it to disappear. Please, this time, let it linger. Let me take it inside. Give me a moment to turn all of my attention onto it. There's nothing more important. How long did it take me to learn that lesson? Allow me to measure every aspect of it so that I might remember it more clearly later. So that I can recall some tiny, pale version of the real thing. It's been too long. Let me stay here and bask in it, for old time's sake.

Unexpected, surprising always. It moves through me like a ghost. I know it will move on, but this time, this time, let it stay a bit longer.

Part of it must be carried on the rare shade of sunlight that only appears at odd instances. I can't be the only one that looks for this. But no one speaks of it, maybe for fear of losing the privilege of experiencing it. We wait, without knowing for what, and then when the moment comes, it's all obvious. Fleeting, but obvious, for only a moment. It seems longer but it's not. People don't talk about it. Does it happen to others? It must, it can't be only me. Maybe they're too busy to notice, maybe it scares them. Maybe others never feel this feeling. That tingle, that sense of pleasant displacement. Like you've walked into the wrong room by accident and seen something, wonderful, something forbidden, something not for you. You want to stay, to be invited in, to be accepted, to have the choice.

But it disappears, like a scent in the wind, and I'm left with an imperfect memory again.

I wait for it to happen again, I will it to happen again. I want so much for it to happen again, but I waste time and while I dither the images and feelings fade even more. Was this the last time it will come to me? More than a view, more than a memory. For the moment, I had shed my body and my mind and that space was all there was. So, so beautiful.

Now I'm left with only the sweet memory of the feeling, which slowly disintegrates to mundane life. A memory of a memory. A beloved song, lost, one note at a time. A picture that begins to slowly fade as soon as it is completed. Like a painting in the sunlight, the colors, once alive and vibrating with excitement, slowing to gray-scale, the outlines blurring, the background merging with the dull yellow hue that lies behind the rest of a moment-less life.

Think back, the last time I really remember the feeling, the sublime alignment of all my senses. What am I remembering or seeing? I think maybe, when I was around four years old. I remember standing on the grass, in the empty yard next to our house, alone. Facing south, facing the sun, eyes closed, the color was blood red-orange, the heat of a distant fusion engine on my face. A sun that shone only for me, I was perfectly still. Life moving all around me, but I'm alone, un-moving. Perfectly still. A breeze washing a hundred temperatures over me with each tick of the cosmic second-hand. Each small packet of air carrying its own aromas-- dirt, concrete, the green and brown grass, asphalt, damp laundry hanging on the taut clothes line, snapping in the breeze. Each smell made more vibrant and intense by the heat of my blazing star. A thousand sounds of different volumes, pitches and patterns rattling my ears and body. Each change of sense, an important and irreplaceable part of the world. My world. It may have been the last time I was not afraid.

I can remember it now. How could I ever forget and yet I did. I forgot it for years, decades. It was pushed out of my mind, taken from me. At first, crowded out of the center and later violently shoved into some corner by all the things I "learned" were more important. I forgot that wonderful feeling, the feeling of belonging where I stood. I was four years old and I owned that little piece of universe on which I stood. It was mine and on it, I was connected to everything else. I was four years old and there was no division between my mind and everything else.

After that, I began to catalog all the places I didn't belong. Everywhere else there was danger and the danger made me afraid. I learned to carry that fear with me, barely hidden. That's how you do it. You build walls and hide within, but even within my little redoubt, I doubted. I was afraid, and you can't own anything but your fear when you're afraid.

Let me remember that pleasant light a little longer, remembering when I had no fear. Let me feel that old sun, my old sun on my face and move that air through my senses one more time. I promise to take better care of the memory this time. I'll lock it away inside and only take it out when I need it. It's precious to me.

Here's a thought. Perhaps it's a glimpse of what I will see when I go back to where I came from, when I die. I could live with that, very comfortably.

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Those who forget the past may be obliged to re-write it.

My great-grandfather, Ulst-Heinrich von Pfefferknudlerhorst, once said that; “You may think you’re right, but only the man in the big house on the hill can say for sure.”

I think what Boom-Papa Ulst-Heinrich meant by this was more like, might makes right, he who has the gold makes the rules, poor people like us can’t afford opinions, you can lead a horse to water, etc. You get the idea.

It’s a complicated thing. I know for sure that there was a lot of heavy metals in the water around his house and he had his share of peculiarities. For example his real name was Eddie Finkle and he lived his entire life just outside Tonganoxie, Kansas. He adopted the name Ulst-Heinrich von Pfefferknudlerhorst after a blow to the head from a falling beam in his sod house. Following the same event he discovered he could understand the native language of game birds. It lead to him writing an “Pheasant-English Handbook of Common Phrases” or “Fasan Grammatik für die Engländer” in his newly acquired language. In truth, the German version of the book’s name was the only foreign phrase he knew or needed to know as the book was written in and for pheasants. It never sold well but did lead to a coven of followers who called themselves the Pheasant Babblers (who still exist as the Noyes County Auctioneers, LLC).

I know all this calls into question any wisdom that might be winnowed from anything he said, but consider this, it was he who made up the familial honorific “Boom-Papa” and insisted upon being addressed as such by everyone and the name he pulled out of thin air was pretty cool, especially around turn-of-the-century Tonganoxie.

It is important to keep in mind that there were no hills anywhere around his house or big houses for that matter.

An Apology Couldn't Hurt

You rush to the big Conference Room, briefcase in your left hand, portfolio case in your right. You’ve got the charts and numbers, the cartoon ads and logo changes, an entirely new Ad Campaign with a completely new approach.

You worked hard over the previous week and all last night polishing the presentation, because Ms. Tatum-Holstein, from the Chicago Regional Head Office is going to be there.

She’d like to hear something that might save her division and possibly the whole company. She’d like you to make the public forget the “less-then-ideal” product launch for “Wholesome O’s” you staged last month, in which an entire mobile petting zoo was crushed by a falling shipping container, which happened to be adorned with a giant company logo. 

Unfortunately, the roll-out plan included live coverage of the event so all this was shown on a CBS-Affiliate live television feed, complete with a crowd reactions ranging from fainting to vomiting to catatonia, which has since come in 2nd only to “Gangnam Style” for number of views on YouTube. 

Entering the room you stop, it’s empty, most of the chairs have been overturned and broken, the contents of two entire trays of pastries have been thrown against the wall, the carafes of coffee are smashed against the plate glass windows and there’s a good deal of blood on the table.

You can see now that your memo may have been a mistake and that your assurance, that none of the baby animals suffered, may have fallen on deaf ears.

The Endless Quest for Better Excellence

by Ed Bevelton, Staff Writer

Today we turn our attention and our thanks to an un-remembered and largely forgotten resource that we nevertheless, owe a great many of our thanks to, the tireless writers of today's websites, particularly one in general. A small group of thankless heroes with a unique and special story.

The Rising-Gorge Writers Collective was the brain-child of Anders Bingleton and "Tepid Rod" Stansbury, both professional journalists from metropolitan newspapers of the 1950's. Bingleton, with his shock of unruly red hair and crooked smile, wrote a social advice column for The Ottumwa Weekly Herald. Rod Stansbury, standing just over five feet tall, covered the Lost & Found Animals beat for Hays City Today. 

Both Bingleton and Stansbury held the mandate of the free press in the highest esteem and were always looking for new ways to advance the profession and even though their work was 200 miles apart, fate had plans to bring them together for a great purpose.

It was 1957 when they met at a press conference held by Dar-Lou Rendering Resources, Inc. in Smothering Kin, Nebraska introducing "A Cheaper Bio-Alternative to Newsprint", and discovered their mutual love of the 5th estate and fabrics in remodeling. They immediately quit their jobs, moved in together beginning a lifelong journey of excellence in journalism, which ultimately lasted 2 years, when they both tragically transitioned into the afterlife while picnicking, in a fiery episode involving Stansbury's Pontiac Catalina, two five-gallon cans of gasoline and some undetermined refreshments.

Their end was untimely, but not surprising, and not before they were able to create and fund an ongoing organization for writers of burgeoning talent and scope; The Rising-Gorge Writers Collective.

Today, The Rising-Gorge Writers Collective has its spacious, well-appointed headquarters just outside Tenino, Washington and boasts some of the newest and most interesting writers in the business. Among the exciting work going on there, a division of the collective known only as the Mollification Project has created the fabulous new website "Somebody Owes Me an Apology.com" which is taking the internet by leaps and storms. 

So you can be sure that the midnight oil is burning brightly and copiously in the caverns of creativity and no stone will remain un-turned in the never-ending quest to bring a new day to the night which covers journalistic excellence, by The Rising-Gorge Writers Collective.

So let's take a moment to say "Thank You" to those intrepid and compass-less pioneers of future history, whoever they are.

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