National Novel Writing Month Pt 9

    “Lets get out of here. You , me, Alice, Jane, and Ruby like old times.”

    “Sandra, what are you talking about? We are in lockdown.”

    Laughing “When has that ever stopped us before? But if it would make you  happy we can tell Ora that we want to take the boat and spend some time at sea.”

    “That sounds like a great idea. Maybe some sunlight and the open ocean will do me good.”

    “Great, I’ll make the arrangements and we can get packing.”

    I love Sandra, she always has the best ideas. She can get me out of any depression I find myself in. How could I be so fortunate to have such a good friend?

    There is a message on my communicator watch telling me that Ora wants to see me. The little device works off the underground wifi net and allows us to make local calls, send messages, and report broken equipment all conveniently located on the wrist. Sandra couldn’t have had time to talk to her so something must be wrong. Maybe something I set up before I last left broke down and she wants me to fix it. Heading to her rooms I follow the strong scent of jasmine heavy in the warm air. Ora always loved jasmine but she only started planting lots of it on living walls when I told her that the plant has antidepressant properties. She covered the living walls with jasmine and laughed saying she loved making people happy. The pots are all very small as jasmine only blooms when the roots are tightly potbound. Then these beautiful white flowers form in large quantities dripping from the walls. Talk about making a simple corridor beautiful. The bees are always so busy finding all the fresh flowers and making such lovely honey. We keep the colonies confined with a small metal strip that doesn’t allow a queen to escape so we don’t end up with random nests turning up in air vents and such. That would be a pretty bad disaster since some of us are allergic to bee stings but without the possibility of an africanized bee infestation we are just fine. This place is so beautiful and so much planning had to go in to make it a success that it would break my heart if I were ever to lose it. I know so many who feel the same.

    Ora wants to be as close to her people as possible so she has a no front door policy. There is no door on her rooms this way anyone who wishes to can see her unimpeded. White columns covered with passion fruit vines surround the reflecting pool where fish are also grown. Blending beauty and utility she models how we should live our lives surrounded by life and light. Something is really bugging me about the lights though. There is so much more electricity in use right now than could have been possible given the sustainable means in place before I left. The poor gerbil in the turbine must be losing his damn mind by now or something else is going on.

    “Wise one you summoned me.” I say upon seeing her tending one of her plants.

    “Yes Sari, come with me we must talk.” We walk into a curtained doorway and sit at a small wooden table with a beautiful floral patterned ceramic tea set. I move forward and pour the tea offering her the first cup politely waiting to drink till after she has had the first drink. The tea is lemon balm one of my favorites, she must be buttering me up for something.  

    “I need your help with something.” She says setting down the cup. “There is a slight problem with the nuclear reactor.”

    Confused I ask “What nuclear reactor?”

    “The one I had built while you were gone. Solar and wind power could never keep up with our demands without drawing significant attention to us here. Geothermal requires way too much equipment and releases too many toxins into the environment to be seriously considered as usable. Not to mention how fast that kind of equipment degrades all the time. We are too far inland to use tidal. Hydroelectric would harm the native fish in that stream neerbye. We had to go nuclear. We didn’t really have another choice it was either go nuclear or go noticed, and we both know what would happen if the outside world suddenly took an interest in us. They would come and tear the entire colony apart and scatter the children to the wind.”

    “I can’t believe what I am hearing. Yes nuclear power plants can be very safe but how could she make such a decision without talking to me? I thought I was in the inner circle and was privileged to all such information. I guess I can’t be too hurt. I was gone for over two years. “Where did you get the fissionable material?”

    “From smoke detectors. You said once before that they all contain a small amount of radioactive material. The trick was to get enough of them without arousing suspicion. We went to different hardware stores and purchased four or five at a time till we had enough. It took months and had to be spread out over lots of states so it didn’t seem like there was a sudden run on smoke detectors.”

    “We don’t have a nuclear physicist on hand or did you acquire one of those too?”

    “Sari, don’t be upset. You weren’t here for me to tell you these things. I couldn’t just send it to you in an email as that kind of stuff is all heavily monitored by the NSA. And no we don’t have one but a few of us did read up on the topic before we dove right in.”

    “So what is the problem? What is it that you want me to do?”

    “I don’t want you to do anything. I want to pick your brain a bit. The stuff in the reactor is breaking down too quickly. We need another source of nuclear material. Where else can we get it.”

    “What about the radioactive rocks in the desert that uranium is extracted from?”

    “There are rocks sitting on the earth’s surface that contain uranium and we can just walk up to them and pick them up?”

    “Yes but it isn’t pure and you have to refine it before it would be any good in the reactor.”

    “Thank you, that is what I wanted to know. You may go.”

    “Yes wise one.” I respond reflexively rising and moving to leave. Pausing I turn and look at her. “You shouldn’t hide things like this because we are what we pretend to be so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” Leaving her I am overwhelmed by how much things have changed since I was here last and the secrets that are being kept. I thought we all agreed not to keep secrets like that. What else is Ora hiding these days?

Where dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water rats;

There we've hid our faery vats,

Full of berries

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand.

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

    I walk around thinking about what Ora has done while I was gone and hoping that the same love and light I learned to expect from this place is still here and that nothing has been truly perverted by her decisions.

Why Americans hate Arabs!

Americans hate Arabs because Arabs invented algebra. See most Americans are very bad at math and want to punish others for their shortcomings in the manor of the code of Hammurabi so they are trying to punish all Arabs for creating algebra. Things we are also mad at Arabs for are the creation of zero. Now they had a number to represent nothing. Which still baffles some Americans. We are also mad at the Arabs giving us their numbers so long division would be possible. Think about it how would you do long division with roman numerals. So that is why Americans hate Arabs. Arabs posses dangerous methods of math instruction!

National Novel Writing Month pt 8

    She left me to reflect further and I went for a walk. Maybe the plants can help cure what ails me. Why does everything need to get so hard? No matter how much you love a subject, person, or thing, everything always gets hard.

A favorite subject will become increasingly difficult until one wonders why there ever was a desire to begin in the first place. Thing back to when you first started writing letters. You were attempting to write the alphabet in barely recognizable scribble on paper, and you were praised so highly for this. Then you found out these letters formed words and that was ok, but not so fun because those words had to be spelled correctly. Then things got worse, you were expected to put those words into sentences, which was ok, but there were so many rules. Noun verb agreement, preposition location, tenses, and punctuation just to name a few. Then there was only one right way to do things and if you didn’t do it right you got noting for the effort. This became still more difficult when the concept of paragraphs was introduced and fell apart completely with the requirement of essays. The major problem with essays is that there is no one right way to write one and each person has their own requirements. Those requirements are rarely stated up front so it is a kind of roulette to try and get the essay just right.

This subject became just too complicated. This complication and increasing demand chased many students away from attempting to excel in the topic. Every subject does this and the jumps in requirements are not always gentle and over the course of years. As you become older and progress through the topic you are expected to make larger and larger jumps in shorter amounts of time. As the topic becomes harder and requires more explanation you receive less instruction and have less time to digest in. This is why I hate the school system, everyone just expects you to be good at everything and if you aren’t then they just move on without you, and leave you lost in the dust.

People are similar but the problem with them progresses much quicker. You start out with not knowing where you stand with someone, and if you fail completely in the relationship, you end the same way. They start by telling you about themselves and you are to remember everything they say, and everyone has their specific requirements that are most important, and if you neglect to remember the right thing you have caused offence. Then that person does the unthinkable, introducing you to their friends and family which all do the same thing. So now you have all this completely useless information and you are required to know all of it to the end of time. Then you are exposed to their personality and are required to adapt your thinking to handle this. If they are having a bad day you are required to care and know just the right thing to do or say. That is completely ridiculous. How can someone expect that of another human? To expect that is to expect failure. No one can read your mind and even if they could, do you honestly think they would stick around? No, I refuse to try and understand people. People just expect way too much and it is too hard to satisfy their image of you.

Inanimate objects are not exempt from this. If you own a cell phone and don’t know how to send pictures on the thing people make fun of you for owning the option. To own an object is to know everything about the object.  This knowledge is expected to be innate and if it is not, then you are seen as some kind of freak. Everyone is required to know everything about all things. It would be far simpler to just not own anything in the first place.

One could say that I just hate everything or that I have had bad experiences with people and their expectations, but I stopped caring about people and their expectations, their completely unreasonable and irrational expectations.

    Sandra is kneeling in a patch of mallow harvesting some and weeding. Her bright pink pixie cut hair perfectly frames her face. I love watching her work. She is like an ethereal being somehow found on earth. She never quite seems to belong and yet is bound to the plants. She and I always had that in common. Never quite belonging anywhere but always drawn back to the plants. Looking up she flashes me a smile which I try to return and walk over to join her.

    Kneeling across from her on the path we greet and exchange pleasantries but there is an elephant in the room which we both don’t want to talk about. Unexpectedly I burst into tears and tell her all about Asa, how I found him and how he must have suffered. When our eyes meet again we are both crying.

    She leans over and embraces me. We hold each other in silence for a time. Slowly everyone comes over and joins into a giant group hug. I don’t know who started it but someone started the tickling. Soon we dissolved into a huge giggling mass on the ground. I hadn’t laughed like that in weeks. Sandra and I leave to get drinks.

    One of my more well known skills is distilling liquor to a very high proof. I am very good at controlling a system like that. I may have flunked out of engineering and landing in biology but I always could look at a system and improve it, or even set up a multi stage process from scratch. So we have on hand large quantities of hard alcohol. There is no way on earth that anyone can get a group of hippies to give up pot and alcohol. We have both in abundance. We don’t have anything harsher or let anyone under the age of 21 consume because their brains haven’t finished forming yet. With enough education the children are willing to wait to consume.

Sandra starts making a pitcher of lemon margaritas. My favorite. “You look like you could use a drink.”

“Yes, but who wouldn’t after the month I have had.” I reply.

“I really am sorry about Asa. He was a good man and didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“Thanks,I just don’t know what to do, how to feel, or who I even am any more.”

“Bugs in amber.”

“What?”

“All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.”

    “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

    “That depends. Do you? I’m not sure but I never was good at knowing what to say when someone dies but it does sound introspective I think. Either way, you are speaking again so I will call that a win.”

Sandra always did know how to put me at ease. We talk and joke into the night and probably drink too much but hey if you can’t drink to excess with a good friend then you shouldn’t drink at all.

National Novel Writing Month Pt 7

Reality is like a river, always moving always changing.  Reality can only be found in the present, but in the time it takes to explain the present, the present has moved on, and the event you were trying to express now in the past.  Reality is difficult to express not only because it is expressible only in the past, but the past becomes difficult to recall with time.  For example few people know what they ate for breakfast three weeks ago.  There is also a filter placed on your perceptions of reality.  For instance you probably remember the first time you hit something with a car, and not what any of your meals were that day.  This is why past reality is highly selective to the person remembering the event.  Your perceptions of reality depend greatly upon what is important to you.

Reality is similar to consciousness, and consciousness is just that annoying period between naps.  Since reality is just a projection of your mind then consciousness is relative to your consciousness in relation to other people’s consciousness.  For example when you fall asleep your reality turns into a sort of dream world.  The only way you are able to know what is dream and what is reality is by other people’s consciousness.  If this was not so then there would be many frames of reality, and any of them would cease to exist once you stopped being conscious of that form of reality.  For instance the world could end if you stop paying attention to it.

To prevent things from no longer existing once there are no longer paid attention so there must be some form of higher level consciousness to which we are all linked.  The only example of this that I can think of is “The Borg” from Star Trek.  This is a group of people who all possess the same consciousness.  All of their minds are linked.  Every thing anyone had done is known about by all.  Then there are random computer malfunctions during which certain Borg are cut off from the collective.  These individuals usually can not cope with being alone, and proceed to do some incredibly odd things in their quest to become part of the collective again.  Some people appear to have more of a group consciousness than others.  I have frequent moments in which I do not know how I know something, and yet I still know the piece of information.  For example, when living in the house of someone I have never met before I know where everything is stored in the kitchen and the complete layout of the house.  Everything from where dried fruit is store, to where the bathrooms are, even finding the flashlights or the working batteries.  Apparently some people never have these moments.

    If I keep him alive within my heart then there is a chance that I will always be able to see him to feel him to love him for all time. These are all the moments and truth I have left to live for. For I have nothing else. The wounds are far too fresh to just move on. The idea of the world turning on without him is too painful for words.

    “He will be born again.” Startled I look up to realize the leader has joined me. “We all see that you grieve for him and you will be given your time to do so but you must start speaking with others. We can’t have you forever walking in darkness. You do dishonor to his memory by cutting yourself off from everyone.”

    I know she is right, but how do I move on?

National Novel Writing Month Pt 6

    I love my underground cottage but I always wanted one in the trees. A house full of light and life. One I could share with the forest creatures around me and live up in the canopy. Where I could look out at the world with love and wonder. I could greet the sunrises and dance in the sunsets. The breezes would soothe me to sleep every night. The world would be full of magic and I would be honored to dwell within. But the world we live in is not yet ready for such thing. Too many people want to destroy such forest houses. Calling the forest life an abomination. Force me into their narrow mold of city life. Still this underground home is closer to the life of a forest elf I always longed for. The organic sculpted walls. Little shelves full of my treasures. A bathtub I could swim in.  A closet full of flowing fluttery clothing that somehow is more practical than the mass produced crap found on the surface above. But it is not all about the material goods but also the people who live here and love me for who I am. Breathing deeply I know my freshly found inner peace could not last I began the day with my mantra.

        Believe you are one!

Invite magic into your life.

Create your own enchanting wings.

Always use your powers for good.

Design your own reality, full of happiness, peace and love.

Celebrate every day with laughter, songs and play.

Paint sunrises on rocks and leave them on empty doorsteps.

Picnic with a grasshopper and unravel the mysteries of the universe.

Plant your favorite cookie crumbs for the ants.

Grow a wish garden and bring your dreams to life one by one.

Blow kisses to gray clouds and paint your toenails with raindrops.

Build elegant butterfly houses and rent them out for free.

Dance daily.

Find something beautiful in everyone you meet and remind them of it.

Hug trees until you can feel a heart beating with yours.

Share your secrets with your feathered and furry friends.

Follow rainbows with kindred spirits and discover the treasures along the way.

Fill empty spaces with flowers.

Whisper your worries to dragonflies and let them be carried far, far away.

Write poems about friendship, faith and forgiveness and leave them on park benches.

Nap in the grass and let ladybugs dance in your hair.

Stretch time and space, and travel to new lands.

Soak your soul in sunsets – twilight is a fairy’s finest hour.

Listen to the quiet.

Explore the wonder of you.

Attend cricket symphonies by moonlight.

Make wishes for other people on shooting stars.

Let your wings carry you where no one else has been.

Light the way for others to follow.

Spread the message: Everything is Possible.

Remember that when you believe in yourself, you inspire others to do the same.

    Heading to the large dining hall I am taken off guard by the confusion of sounds and smells of everyone starting their day. The buffet tables, smartly lined up at one side are piled high with foods of every sort. Fresh fruits, vegetables, breads, and soups  I help myself to half a grapefruit, some vegetable broth soup, and a quart of coffee. My usual breakfast for here. Then hesitating as I do not wish for company unlike most days, so I walk to a quieter table in a far corner wishing to be alone with my thoughts. There is a warm fire and soft seats. Many invite me over but I politely decline. Perhaps I have been gone too long this time and should not have stayed away. There are many new faces. We must have expanded in the last couple years. I wonder what changes were made to the layout. If we are still set up to be completely sustainable if the outside world crashes to its inevitable fiery end. That is one of our goals after all. To build a better society that will inherit the earth after the fools outside fall. The entire place can withstand a nuclear attack and we would be able to live out happy healthy lives here. What may look like hand hewn rocks and dirt is actually a series of concrete domes reinforced with rebar all buried ten feet down. I am sitting at a table twenty feet under the earth. There are lower levels as well many full of stored goods and all the technology and machines we would ever need to make anything we want. All carried in from miles away all of this built without anyone from the outside world having any sort of hint of the work being done. The children grow up as part of a community and we even have teachers and doctors here. We aren’t some religious nuts or dirty hippies. We are a group of like minded people who wish to survive the coming apocalypse that everyone can sense is coming. There has been an ever increasing number of public shootings, people losing their minds and taking out others, and almost everyone is doing some sort of prepping within their own homes. Everyone can tell at some level that something big is going to happen and we are fully set up here to weather the storm.

    The leader of our community sits down with me and while finishing my breakfast I tell her my tale. After which I give her the vile I still have in my pocket and ask her to get the biotech people on figuring out what, if anything, can be learned from the vial. She gives a few commands into her watch and we go into lockdown. Everyone who was on the surface goes underground and all portals to the surface are sealed. No one will be able to enter or leave till our leader decides it is safe. The surface stop action cameras will be monitored constantly and she will help to get to the bottom of this whole mess. But she doesn’t say what we both know. That the trip to russia was why my husband was killed. That someone wants this vial and is willing to kill to get it. That if anyone knows about our little colony they don’t want us to have radiation eating bacteria. Otherwise nothing would stop us from launching a nuclear weapon and destroying the rest of civilization as we know it and taking the earth as our own. Nothing that is except for our lack of a nuclear weapon. Some people really have too much of an imagination about little societies like mine. That somehow we always accomplish the impossible. I could make a weapon but I wouldn’t want to. All I would need is a few thousand smoke detectors and to remove their nuclear material to make a giant bomb. It wouldn’t be hard I just wouldn’t do it. There is still so much light and life around the world that I would hate to destroy. So much biodiversity that I could not bring myself to lose. We would even lose the towering trees above this place. Who would do such a thing?

    I wander the corridors, halls, and meeting places. For what? I know not. Perhaps I look for an absolution. An answer to make sense of all the violence I encountered while away. Something that will make up for the loss of my love. Or explain why there are so many fowl people in the world. I wish only for a life of light and love, why must I encounter so much evil and hatred in my search for happiness? Why do so many seek to destroy me and all that I stand for? There are so many green growing things here that I pick up a hip basket and knife and start in on the lemon harvest. There is always so much to do with the plants. So much to harvest. So much food to process and store for later. When something needs done a notice is posted by the head gardener and you can join the workforce till tired and actually accomplish something. There is nothing quite as fulfilling as a job well done. Good work is always worth doing and helps me to collect my thoughts.

    The chimes sound. Could it really be lunch time already? Did I really pick the entire lemon grove clean? The evidence of my work is all around me. So many bins of lemons full. I load them onto the carts pressing the button for collection and wandering off for lunch.

    The scent of lunch is strong and savery. I wish to taste everything that has been prepared. So many delicious treats all grown organically on site. All the hard work makes the food taste so much better. Grabbing a steaming bowl full of my favorite broth soup, some fruit, and a quart of lemonade I wonder where to sit. I should speak with my friends. I should catch up on current events and the most recent gossip. But I just can’t bring myself to do so. My losses are too great, the wounds too fresh, and the grief too great to just jump back in to such things so soon. So I choose the peace of the fireside table at the far end of the room. I know I won’t be able to choose this for too much longer but I only wish to be alone with my thoughts. I hope no one followed me here to this sanctuary under ground. I hope we are all still hidden from the outside world. I wish us all to never be discovered as that would lead to disaster. Many watch me from across the room. I try  not to notice but it weighs on me that I am ignoring my friends and adoptive family. I could care less if I offended my biological family as they are abusive fools, schizophrenics, alcoholics, and assholes. But these people are ones I love and who love me in return and they don’t make me walk through fire just to prove it. In time I will tell them my story and they will be patient till then.

Tic Tac Powrmint as a decongestant

I came across this item purely by chance. I like mint and I wanted something sweet so I went for a tic tac. I first noticed that the flavor was more reminiscent of star anise than mint but a few seconds later I could breathe! Now I have allergies year round and antihistamines only seem to take the edge off. This is the best natural decongestant I have ever found. These puppies allow me to breathe better than at any other time in my life!

National Novel Writing Month Pt 5

    The hairs on the back of my neck are bristling. I hear the heavy and dull thud of something hit the ground and a dragging step. I run. I just run as far and as fast as I can. Someone is following me. I can hear their footsteps thudding after mine in step with my heart. The parking lot. I must get to the parking lot. Flying down the stairs I am as a bird in flight soaring fast and far.

    In the lot there is a cop car, a beat to shit geo metro, a shiny lexus, and a mazda miata. I run to the miata and slam my elbow into the driver’s side window. With a slight pop and a crash the window falls into the door. Reaching inside I unlock the car and slide in. The key is in the ignition but when I turn it nothing happens. No sound. Nothing. Down to the left of the steering column right about my left knee is a bright red pull switch. The car roars to life and I speed away. Whoever owned this car sucked at the aesthetic upkeep but did an amazing job on the engine. I am on the freeway in no time. But where do I go? What do I do? Why have I stolen this car? Well the cops can’t help me. That much I am certain of. Otherwise I would have been safe in that hotel room No, whatever this is it is big. Someone is willing to go to great lengths to get to me. They will stop at nothing to do so. I need answers, cash, and to disappear. No credit or debit cards. Someone is tracking those for sure. I throw my cell phone out the window and drive north. I have safety in the north. I have secrecy in the north. I can disappear in the north.

    I drive through the remainder of the night and well into the next day. Alternating between crying over my loss and the unfairness of a life cut so short. To rage that this is all happening. To desperation of trying to figure out what is happening. I stop only for food and gas paying out of an amount of cash that I had sewn in to my purse years ago. A secret compartment that I had to use a knife to open. I hid the cash there for just this kind of emergency, an emergency I prayed to all the gods that I would never have. The road is beginning to blur the streetlights running together I am so far past tired that I don’t even care what happens to me anymore. All I care about is reaching the safety of the redwood forest and the secrets held within.

    I pull over to a rest stop and leave the car unlocked, window down, and key in the ignition. All I take is my purse. There is a lot of crime here and hopefully the car will disappear on its own. I never did intend to keep it I just wanted to borrow it. Much like umbrellas I don’t buy cars. I just rent them on karmic credit from the universe. All through college I would never buy an umbrella. I would just find one when I needed it just laying there waiting for use. Then when I put it down again someone else would use it. To me cars are much the same thing. I find or am given them when I need them but never have to actually purchase one. They just show up when necessary and leave when they have served their purpose.

    The next five miles need to be made on foot. Where I am going there are no roads. I just need to head east, straight east to safety. There are many ways to get there but eventually all journeys lead me back here. I have no food with me but there is always food in the forest. Especially a temperate redwood forest in summer. The first thing I find are the massively oversized clover shaped plants that taste of sour apple. A personal favorite of mine. A few quick handfuls later and I start to feel better.

    The shade of the dense foliage cools me. The deep rich scent of loam in the air refreshes me. I stand still for the first time in days and just breathe. A gentle breeze caresses my face as if in welcome. I am coming home.

    A few calm hours of walking and hiding my tracks in the spongy moss and I am safe at last.

    As I top the last hill I see the table top rock. A huge circle of rock hand hewn but expertly worked to look like a natural formation. I climb on top of the waist high formation and face east. Pulling out a mirror from my purse I hold it high and try to direct a few flashes of sunlight to the next hill. I have to wait almost an eternity but some flashes are returned. Only then do I step down off the table rock to continue my journey. Nearing the top of the hill I am greeted by many old friends. People call out to me with open arms and warm greetings.

    “Wanderer you look tired.” says a soft voice behind me

    “I am wise one, that I am.”

    “Then come, eat, rest, and then tell us your tale. Your rooms have been prepared.”

    I follow slowly and I am very tired. There are many moss hills around nestled between the towering trees. A vine is pulled and a doorway in the moss opens. Perfectly formed stone steps lead into the dim world below. As we descend the door above closes once more and the soft light brightens. The cold stone walls surround use enclosing us in. Just when I think I can’t stand it any more the world opens up with light and life. There are beautiful citrus trees everywhere. Every speck of ground is used for growing crops, herbs, and medicinal plants. They even grow up the walls. Soft water pores onto the plants from above. Such an intricate watering system that looks somehow organic. Miniature fountains are everywhere. The air is heavy with citrus, jasmine, and lavender. Other plants make themselves known as you pass. There is no one scent to describe the the underground eden we find ourselves strolling through. In the center is a table set for two and piled high with all my favorites beef lo mein, shrimp scampi, and an amazing fruit salad featuring the most recent harvests. We eat to the music of the fountains and enjoy the silence.

    “You have endured much wanderer.”

    “Yes.”

    “You need rest.”

    “Yes.”

    With that we rise from the table and I walk to my rooms. There are as many corridors off from the garden as there are numbers on a clock. I take the corridor by the pomegranate tree. Three doors down on the right is where I live. Spacious rooms for underground but I did help build them. None of that post modernist crap but an old world cottage of mud and wood. Hand crafted walls which hold all my treasures from stones to plants to trinkets gathered the world over. All of it is here and I finally feel safe at last. A soothing bath in a stone tub and off to bed. A huge canopy bed covered with white gauzy fabrics delicate to the touch. I smell fresh linens and climb in. When my head hits the pillow the lights all fade out. I drift off to blessed darkness.

The night was dark, cool and not too cool. The perfect summer night to sleep under the stars. The new moon shinning behind my back, I hope it brings me luck. The old ways speak much of suck charms and spells. Unfortunately delay in such thoughts will only make me more likely to be caught. I must escape this place and have been planning for months. A small bag of food and clothing should be enough that I can get to the house I see in my sleep. I just hope the place is not just a figment of my imagination. I have seen the house and how to get there so often in my sleep that I don’t know what is real any more. I must be going crazy, here I am at midnight duct taping a flashlight to a bike in order to be able to see to ride tonight. The plan is simple just leave and never look back. Implementing this on the other hand will defiantly prove more difficult. Not daring to turn on the light in case I would be seen, I leave the only home I have ever known in hopes of finding the place in my dreams. Rounding the bend in the old dirt road, I doubt myself again. Can leaving be this simple? Unlatching the back gate as I had done so many times before I hope the squeak of the rusty old hinges does not stir anyone. Which would be amazing considering I am now half a mile from the main house. Perhaps it is the people whose patterns I don’t know that I am most afraid of. Still not daring to turn on the light I ride past my neighbor’s house looking for where the back road turns into my grandmother’s driveway. I want the road just past it. Hopefully no one else is up. I have never spoken to those neighbors and they would undoubtedly not understand my plight. Every rustle of leaves, every animal stirring, and every sound from all around me makes me jump. All I want is to get away from him and to that house in my dreams.

Life would be so easy if I would just turn around and go back, I know exactly what waits behind me and nothing about what is in front of me. I need to put as many miles between me and the place I come from as possible to night. That way when I am discovered missing the cops will have the wrong search radius. If I ride strong and hard I should be able to make twenty miles by daybreak. I have been training up for this for the last three months. Riding as far in one direction as I can then turning around and seeing if I can make it home before I drop. Home, such a funny word, if home is where the heart is then I have been living in the wrong place for all too many years. The house in my dreams is where my heart lays. Now for the most risky part yet of this journey, passing my neighbors house and not getting caught. Helpful that they don’t know that they are to be looking for me. Now, should I ride quickly past, or slowly and silently? It all depends really on whether or not they have a motion sensor light. God I hate those things. You can be the most silent person on the planet and still a dam light goes off. Which is far more obvious than any twig snapping. I should just go back home, but sneaking back in can be far more dangerous. On the inside I know where everyone is by sound, on the outside, someone could have moved about the house and I would be caught due to not knowing where they had moved to. I would be beaten for sure if I was caught sneaking back in. I can just here him saying “where did you think you were going, were you out with a boy, are you disgracing this family again?” a boy, ha! Why would I spend time with a boy? Worthless creatures, all they do is poke a girl, get her pregnant, and then beat her for not doing every little thing they could possibly want. I never want to be with a boy.

How long have I been standing here? This is not good. If I am to get out of here I need to pay more attention, and make a decision! To walk quietly, or ride swiftly. I am letting my fear get the better of me, I should just ride quickly. Running scared is a lot faster than running mad, so I should be able to put this fear to good work and ride quickly. The gravel crunching under my wheels must be loud enough to wake the dead, but that must be because I am focusing on the sound I am making rather than the sounds of my environment. After I am on the main road I will switch the light on, for now I just need to hope I don’t hit anything. Ironic that I want the light when I can’t use it, and plan to use it when I don’t need it.

I know these roads, I have ridden all the ones around me so that I know them in daylight and darkness. Most of the ones that are out past about forty miles I know from my dreams. I have been shown every detail between me and where I need to go so that hopefully I won’t become lost. Though this journey might just be one of those of self discovery in which I need to learn that the place I am looking for is only in my heart or some such shit. In which case I am completely screwed because what child has any skills in which legitimate money can be made. I can’t go back now, so I need to go forward. My worst fear is some idiot cop picking me up and taking me back home. They would never understand what goes on there, but hopefully that is behind me and I need not think about any of it ever again.

Why am I so apprehensive about this, if I was doing the right thing then shouldn’t I feel better about this trip, or is this why people just stay in their ruts and refuse to move. I don’t like this feeling, like I am doing something horribly and in explicitly wrong. Which maybe I am, but I can’t go back now. Perhaps this is why I am so unsure of myself. Burning a bridge before I have reached sight of the other side seems completely ridiculous, yet here I am. Lighting that bridge before I even know that there is land on the other side. Of course there must be land on the other side, people don’t just put up a bridge that ends in the middle of the ocean or something, but that is not the point. How far have I gone, oh yeah the light, I don’t want to get hit out here. Usually by this point I am beginning to feel tired, but I guess when you have more initiative, than just riding for a work out, you tend to go farther.  Once dawn hits I won’t need to worry about this light, or being picked up by the cops till tomorrow, so tonight I need to find a place to camp. I was shown a good place and I brought some paint to change the color on my bike and other clothes. I should probably even cut my hair if I can do so without it being obvious that I cut it after all I have no skill in hair nor have I ever tried to cut it on my own.

The place I have been looking for is right in front of me. The gentle sloping hills covered with fruit bearing trees, the sweet sent of cherries in the air, the sky is the bluest I have ever seen and there is not a cloud in the sky. The perfectly manicured walkway under my feet is so steep I can’t ride my bike on, and it seems wrong somehow to even try. The snow caped mountains to my left are in breathtaking clarity. Everything seems too perfect somehow. The birds are singing the sweetest melody I have ever heard, and yet I am almost too anxious to continue. The high walls and gilded wooden gate barely coming into view are both a sight for sore eyes and the worst thing to face yet. If the place I see so vividly I my mind is real, how did I know of it, or did I just travel around till I found something that looked fairly similar. Still, I haven’t eaten in days and should probably see if anyone lives here, if they do I can ask them if I can eat some of their cherries before going on my way. No matter how hungry I am I will not steal food. Some things are just wrong no matter what the situation, and it is obvious that someone lives here; manicured orchards and well kept driveways don’t just happen. Well the only thing left to do is walk up there and find someone to ask about the cherries. Still the gate is so far up there and I am really tired. If I take a nap before continuing then I might not get there till after dark, then there would be no one around to ask for food.

The day is warmer than I first thought, and this hill is no longer gently sloping. The hill is almost too hard to walk up the slope is too steep. The fruit on the trees is looking more tempting than ever. Why am I so concerned with asking permission to eat some fruit? No one would notice if just a few pieces went missing. Besides I am really hungry and I might never get to the gate at the top of this hill or mountain at this rate.

Only a little ways farther, I feel like I am walking almost vertical, but I know that is impossible. Still there have been quite a few impossible things I have faced on this journey. What is one more thing before I decide what to do? Why does it seem like the more I think about the fruit, the farther away that gate becomes, and the steeper the slope. Maybe this is some kind of test, if I just stop thinking about food all together then I would be at the gate in no time. Still I don’t know how thoughts can affect reality. The entire idea seems ridiculous to me.

Why does this gate look fake, like some kind of toy or movie set piece relocated here so that they wouldn’t need to pay for storage or something? Maybe this is a movie set I stumbled on, but that would be ridiculous, why would they use actual fruit trees when fake ones behave so much better. There aren’t even hinges on the gate, what is the point of having a gate if it can’t be used. That would be a good trick for a castle though. Have everything set up so that people think you have a drawbridge and instead you have some wood placed in front of stone. Add some smaller man doors around the sides of the castle so that people can get in and out, which means that there must be another entrance to this place, most likely to the side of this fake gate. Judging from the change in the stone work, that to the right should be the door. If they have a fake gate made of wood, then they probably have a fake stone portion of the wall which is actually a door. Odd people, and rather confusing in a completely logical manner.

Why I believe? Ever since I got here I have been asked one difficult question after another. They say that I can’t leave till I have been enlightened; I still don’t even know what that means. I don’t even know how long I have been here. I find it almost impossible to keep track of time and have almost given up, perhaps I should keep track of years though. Knowing how many years seems important somehow, but I am not sure of how, or to whom. So many things seem that way. I have forgotten much of my old life, and spend most of each day in different forms of meditation, maybe this is enlightenment. Forgetting all of the life before I came here and just knowing the simply joy and mystery to these questions and meditations. I have spent three days so far coming up with why I believe and more importantly what I believe in, because it seems impossible to believe but not in any one particular thing. Though I was told not to list off what I believe only that I believe and why, this is to be some kind of special speech I make for the coming of winter dinner. Giving the speech is to be some kind of high honor, but I am not so sure. I think it is some way of testing my mentor as to what I have been learning and how far I have progressed. I have only one more day to think up why I believe and whether or not it is important to believe in any thing particular. Some of the other kids are complaining about their questions, and others are trying to get help by holding discussions about their question. No one knows my question, because I don’t want them to know. I want to come up with my answer all on my own and not let anyone tell me how to phrase things differently. Why does everyone here seem to be better at these questions than I am?

Everyone is better than me and not just in the questions. I am so dam clumsy in my training; I keep falling on the jumps. I will never be as graceful as all the others. My legs are sore from the stance I need to hold for the exercise, and my back is sore from all the punching and arm movements. They won’t let me spar with anyone, saying that I can do such things when I am better trained or I will hurt myself. When we practice kata I am always facing the wrong direction and doing the wrong thing. Everyone else is perfectly synchronized and I am the one who is lost. There are so many kata and each one is so different it is hard to remember where I am moving and what I am to be doing. The master says that this will all come with time, but I am tired of looking foolish in front of everyone, and I know everyone is starting to get ticked off at me that I can’t keep up with them. The way they look at me with almost constant disapproval. I just wish I was better at all these forms of training.

Still this place is far better than where I was before. There is food here, heat during the winter, and enough clothing to stay warm during cold weather. I am grateful for these things. I sort of wonder what happened when I left. How did my parents take it when I just up and left? There is no contact with the outside world here, so I have no idea if they even tried to look for me let alone want me back. I guess it doesn’t really matter, I am not going back, this place is not without its demands and stress but, at least I feel safe.

Standing up in front of everyone like this always makes me nervous. My mentor said that my answer to, why I believe, was so good that I should not be afraid during my speech. Still the grand meeting hall, packed with all the people who live in this wondrous place, the ancient looking walls, and high vaulted sealing are quite intimidating, especially when everyone is interested in what I have to say and to pick apart my arguments on something as intimate as why I believe. Well I hope this isn’t too bad, so here goes nothing.

    I wake up with a start. The awful dream of how I got here the first time. I hated the farm. The tyrannous father. The insane relatives. The teachers who knew nothing about me. I always felt lost within that world and longed to reach something deeper. Life couldn’t be as shallow as they all tried to convince me it was. That is how and why I found these people to begin with. They took me in and raised me as their own. Why did I ever leave such peace? What was I searching for? No amount of currency could ever mean more than a single plant here.