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Father Time stood outside and above his net. He could read it like a map. He had warned that if the children tried to break his net, they would vanish from the record.

Mother Earth held a secret. She had a special hidden seed, a line of children, that saw time’s net differently than the rest.

What he didn’t tell was that down the line, the net of time was bound to fail.

Only one would make it out. This one would hold all of human history, both written and unwritten.

Luscious, red, and ripe.

Sweet and tart.

A bird’s feast all laid out.

Winter is the season.

When all are eaten the feast is over.

Spring will bring new ones – green and hard.

Bitter to the taste.

Age will transform them

Into the bird’s desire.

Eventually dreamland faded. Father Time, a mutual acquaintance, had come between Mother Earth and Father Sky, as he wove his net partitioning the growing space.

While dreamland thrived their seed had become prolific. Their horde of children spread wide across the land, and they grew apart.

Mother Earth’s flock contained a menagerie of beasts.Her human children cherished some, hunted others, and ignored many.

The children inherited language from their father. Their language grew and divided. As it grew, the children began to name the beasts, and with this sprang forth a multitude of metaphors and similes.

Language became a master instrument that could immortalize.

The children followed its music, not really understanding all the hidden implications.

When Mother Earth married Father Sky they created a dreamland where they could meet in bliss.

Outside of dreamland they had to part. Mother Earth had her flock and Father Sky had his stars.

Their children were forever cursed to live in between. They were called humans.

Some revered their mother and took to her land, obliged to never really know their father except in their dreams.

Others cursed their mother, seeking to plunder her land, and constantly looked upward, seeking ways to merge their days with their father.

A couple years ago a woman came to work at the school where I work. We were around the same age, and seemed to be from similar backgrounds. On second thought, I think she was several years younger than me. She had been a stay at home mother like I had been for ten years. This was her first year back to work, and she had all the enthusiasm of an idealist. She kind of reminded me of how I was many years ago when I reentered the work force. Time and age has a tendency to tame this, and by year’s end, I could see that some of her enthusiasm had been tamed. The work can be hard when your heart is so entrenched.

One day we happened to be having lunch in the same small break room.She made the comment that every time she hears our school called HMS, which are its initials, she thinks of the words: “Her Majesty’s Ship.”

I think she was referring to ships that sail the seas under the protection of a monarchy. However, I visualized being on a star-ship. This made me smile. I like the idea of being protected by a royal female entity.

My imagination had hooked onto her imagination, and then went in its own direction. For the rest of the day, I imagined sailing through the skies undercover on a royal mission to improve all of humankind. Looking back at this makes me laugh. An active imagination helped me to soar that day. Every day I can summon its power it fills my heart with hope.

This is an idea I hope to instill in all the students I encounter.

 

(I’m on holiday break right now. In my attempts to clean up the clutter in my sitting room, I can’t ignore the notebooks full of frantic writing. I started filling notebooks around the summer of 2013 when my life and mind were shattered. I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to do with them, though, I was inspired to write this poem today to give you a flavor of their contents.)

Barely There

Chasing other’s expectations, running out of breath, never questioning the route, never stopping to explore the hidden motives, I had lost my essence, my passion, my true value. 

I was barely there.

When everything began to break apart I was nothing but liquid smoke clinging to my hollow frame. My mind went haywire, bouncing off everyone else’s thoughts and dreams.

I desperately needed to recollect my scattered mind. Their tentacles had reached into my brain trying to unnerve me. They found my weakness, my taboo thoughts that had been locked away. Though it was I who had unwittingly opened the door. I dared to play this mind game that nearly claimed my soul.

The dark woods beckoned, and my weakness followed. My mind quivered with anticipation. My body was drawn into the quicksand of my dreams. Space and time were frozen where I had dared to go.

I was barely there.

I’ve finally found my way back home. I’m still learning to contain and control my errant thoughts. I’ll eventually decide what I’m going to do with all my scattered frantic notes. For now they can sit and fill the space of an old antique chair.

 

Simple words can express complex thoughts. Action to action along a chain of connected reactions, you can try to trace the beginning.

Marks and signs along the way help to organize these events. Multiple players follow multiple paths, and overlapping paths can confuse us all. To keep them straight you need layers.

The separating layers keep us apart, and yet, the picture is not complete if layers go missing.

The brave among us attempt to be record-keepers in this confusing game.

Language is a communication tool, though, faulty interpretations can mess everything up.

Those with money and power try to control our collective interpretation of our shared world. In the process, they tip the balance their way.

Winners usually record the history which many take to be the complete truth.

If you see the world in black and white with clear cut divisions, you will be missing a big part of the real picture.

Keeping it simple should not mean removing layers and colors.

Overlaps are where common ground exists. These places must be preserved and expanded whenever possible. These common areas are crucial in researching where the truth lies.

We need to find ‘a’ truth where we can all peacefully co-exist.

The past few days have been peaceful, almost too peaceful. It felt like I was drifting on a sea of endless platitudes.

I was living in a slow-motion film until my mind began to nudge me in another direction.

One small step was simple at first until I began to feel a sudden shift in momentum.

I fell backward onto a wavelength I thought I had left behind.

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been tumbling through a Lina Wertmuller film: Swept Away.

I had moved into a virtual realm where Romeo resides. This mind shift my dream had taken filled me with ambivalence.

On one hand, I felt I had succumbed to sin. On the other hand, a dream is harmless. It hurts no one.

The electrical current running through my dream awakened me.

The truth is there is no satisfaction in lifeless platitudes.

I’m thankful for many things. Among them, I’m thankful my mind has settled on fixing a Thanksgiving feast.

The bright green Granny Smith apples are waiting to be sliced for a pie.

The dough will be rolled out on wax paper. The top hasn’t been decided. It will either be a French crumb or a fancy criss-cross.

Cornbread sausage stuffing is an old family favorite. This year I’m thinking of adding chopped pecans.

I have three little piles of potatoes: sweet, red, and golden.

The fresh turkey will be rubbed down with a sweet navel orange, and then seasoned before it goes in the oven.

The French green beans are clean and thin. The cranberry orange relish is already made.

I’m thinking of splurging on a store bought centerpiece: a cornucopia of flowers.

My father died June twenty-second (6/22). This was the first weekend of my summer break. My father’s wife was well prepared to handle the details of death.

I was not looking forward to summer. My mother was 83 years old and getting ready to undergo chemotherapy for a second series. She had been in remission for several months after her first series. It came back with a vengeance.

Even though my parents lived about forty minutes apart, they had been strangers for years. My mother had not been a witness to my father’s decline. She had not seen his slow march to death. She didn’t have to watch the vacant look and emaciation take over my father’s face.

That summer I was forced to watch that same look of death close in and begin to consume my mother. My mother’s husband was less prepared than my father’s wife to handle the details of death.

Time began to warp for me that summer. When I look back and try to order the events that began to happen to me, I can’t be certain of their sequential order. It all gets fuzzy in my mind and memory. I can remember fragments, some of them very vividly. However, the time stamps were missing. It was as if time had stopped for me, and I was living in a vacuum of jumbled events.

I had a dream that summer which in my mind was the initiating event that made me begin to question reality, and specifically my reality.

It was a summer day, and I had laid down for a nap. Maybe it was mid-morning. I was dressed for the day.

It’s difficult to describe what happened because it doesn’t compare to any dream that I’d ever had before this time. I’m not even sure if it was a dream. I’m calling it this because I don’t know what else to call it.

I had a vague awareness that I was lying on my stomach on my bed and my eyes were closed.Something ethereal was within me and within my mind. I remember trying to reach out and touch it. I remember trying to hold its hand to my heart. I remember it reaching back and touching me on my lower back. I had a vague sense it was placing something within me, possibly in my lower spine. Strangely I was not frightened. I kept trying to touch it and have the sensation of feeling flesh. Finally in the last seconds of this dream, I felt its fingertip and saw a flash of light. I heard or sensed it saying “thank-you”.

The last image I saw before my eyes opened to my bedroom floor was the image of a floor somewhere else. I remember seeing the bottom of file cabinets for a fraction of a second. I have no file cabinets in my bedroom.

I have no idea why this ethereal entity was thanking me. After awhile I began to speculate whether my unconscious brain had made some sort of deal. I began to remember fragments of conversation where I thought I was agreeing to something. However, I never could really understand or fully remember what all these conversations entailed. I had to face the possibility that it was all in my imagination.

After awhile I began to think that this entity had seen my future, and was somehow preparing me for it, and ensuring my survival. After this strange dream my reality began to feel as if it was shifting in front of my eyes. There were times I felt like I was in a trance or a waking dream.

During this same time frame my mother had encouraged me to open a financial fund. When I met with the financial adviser I felt like I was in a trance state. At the end of our meeting he handed me a yellow strip of paper where he had written my account number, and then we shook hands. At the moment of our handshake I had an odd flashback to touching the finger of light in my previous dream.

This yellow strip of numbers became attached to an unexplained mission that I felt I needed to explore. I could not shake this foolishness. I fell or was pushed down a rabbit hole of a number obsession. It has taken me years to climb out of it.

My mother died on November tenth (11/10) after a hard and grueling summer and early fall. After this my obsession shifted into high gear.

I have had to face all of this knowing that I’ll never really know what happened to me. I’ll never really know whether there were external forces acting upon me or whether this was all an elaborate creation of my mind alone.