Strangeness and Whales

You know your day is not going well when your whale runs away.
At least that is what I hear.
The boy was distraught. His whale had gone missing the night before. It had thunder-stormed and the whale was afraid of the lightning and the dark (though he liked the rain). I was certain the boy was playing a simple silly game.
I was driving along the same path that I normally took. There an old truck with a faded "For Sale" time. Here a house with so many add-ons you couldn't tell where the original house ended and where the wings began. To the left a the remnants of a barn and to the left...
The apple orchard was the same. The trees were gnarled, like clawed hands. The grass was tall around the trunks, though someone had taken the time to mow uneven paths between the rows. What was different about the field and the trees was the large black and white blow-up whale tethered with a white string to the trunk of one of the trees.

Noted things of interest: Jelly is not so hard to make, but apples are.

the Order of Things

I met a man who was like me; but unlike me in the regard he was happy and content. He has been on earth for seventeen arduous years. He has learned to love and has learned to live with his humanity. He has a wife and three children. I would have never known him for nothing more than a human had he not been joking about how silly humans were to his children.
"I still find it strange," said he, "That children here would go to extremes to make them and their animals look silly just to win a ribbon. Where I am from animals were used for what they were intended and not for fun and games."
His daughter, the one with the animal in question, laughed. It eased the tension she was feeling over the show she was about to enter in.
I asked him if what he said was true about where he came from. He passed this off as silliness and laughed at what he had told his little girl.
When he saw how serious I was he nodded and said it was true.
I asked if it got easier. If, in time, one could truly learn not just to act but to be Human.
The man told me that he had stopped acting eleven years ago when he fell in love. Though, he went on to say, it was still difficult to figure some things out. He still didn't fully understand the religious aspects of humanity. He couldn't grasp why so many people brought plants indoors, especially in the wintertime when plants she be resting for the coming spring. He also couldn't fathom, based on the religious principles of those that he cared for, why death tormented them.
I had never considered death. I believe I shall.
I asked him about the headaches I have been experiencing and the pain in my sides that go along with them now but he had no explanation and said he had adapted well. Even the atmosphere, thin as it was, had not been a problem for him. He did warn me against visiting high altitude areas such as the states of Colorado and Washington saying the mountain air was enough to slice open your lungs and leave you without means of acquiring enough oxygen to stay alive. I shall keep that information in mind when I set for travel.

Noted Things of Interest: Laundry is softer from a dryer, but sweeter from a line.

Note on Being Human: Laughter is the best healer. It can cure ailments and sicknesses and take away anxiety, tension, stress, anger, fear and any other faulty emotion.

Flighting Fancy

The fog this morning hovered five feet above the ground, separating the earth from the sky. It slowly moved away from the trees, twisting and unfurling above me like a wave of flags carried on the wind. The sunlight shone agonizingly bright through the fog, the mist strengthening it and blurring it and spreading its rays.

The headaches are getting more regular and sharper. I seem to have on between ten o'clock in the morning and one o'clock in the afternoon and another between eleven o'clock at night and three o'clock in the morning. This has been the case for nearly a week (five days. Six counting today). The headaches are standable, but unpleasant and they put a damper on the hours that they occur. The headaches (and other aches that come attached) make me feel tangible and more real than when I am merely existing here. Somehow I prefer not having those feelings.

Noted Things of Interest: Meteor showers are not as sensational here as where I am from. I counted three stars that lost their place in the Skies (Heavens, some call it. Outer Space. The Long Road Home. The Gap Between Here and There). Still, the meteors have a tendency to make me feel small. The glory of them fills me with awe and longings and... insignificance.

Notes on Being Human: Humans enjoy flaunting themselves for the world to see. They do so on television, in plays and even on the street. They make jokes about themselves and other at everyone's expenses. They talk jovially and congenially and nonchalantly with one another about things that should not be discussed with your neighbour but somehow are. It's all rather confusing.

Only Absence... Nothing But Silence

Note on Being Human:
Sometimes you simply have to stay inside yourself for a while to tolerate what is going on around you.

Reasons Enough

I heard a lovely song that was not sung by the writer. Apparently it was a "cover" of the writer's song. Covering his vocals with their own, perhaps? It was a deliciously lovely song. Then I heard the original. I was displeased and could not listen to the entirety of said song for it made my head ache.

I was indoors when I heard the plane this evening. It was flying close and there are no airports around. It passed quickly and I thought nothing of it until I heard it again a minute later. It flew over a few times and I decided it would keep doing so, therefore I went outside and stood upon my lawn by my garden fence and watched.

The plane was a deep yellow and it was the kind used for the "dusting" of crops. It flew so terribly close to the field across the road that it is a wonder it had time to clear the trees. The field is not large, but even so the plane dived again and again into it. It would start dusting before even crossing the road into the field so I discarded the idea of riding my bicycle closer. I did, however, watch until it had finished the field and moved on.

The sun was setting behind the dark clouds which had oppressed the sky all day. It was a deep golden-red that tinged the surrounding clouds with its brightness, smudging together the light and dark as if they were being mixed on a painter's palette. The plane, dark yellow and terribly close as it was, flew again and again past the sun. Its wingtips would light as if ablaze each time it passed below the sun.

The garden is awash in a sea of lush grass (a term I did not understand until the plant all but took over my garden) and squash which does not seem to mind the grass. The flowers around the outside of the white fence - marigold, zinnia, cosmos, morning glory, queen Ann's lace and sunflowers - tilted lazily in the stiff breeze blowing from the south. The dog, stupid animal that he is, chased the plane each time it passed overhead.

I rarely encounter such an alarming beauty created by nature and man alike, but here it was and I was awed.

Finding Things Once Lost (and other tidbits)

I sat inside a church. It was empty and the lights were dim. The church was large, not overly ornate, and the rows upon rows of benches ("pews") looked like train track rails lined up side-by-side-by-side-by-side from front to back; enough to fit hundreds of people. After a time people began to drift in. Each person seemed to know where they sat, as if they had been sitting in the same seat every Sunday at the exact hour and nothing would ever change. A woman knelt, her hands folded beneath her chin. She was in the center partway towards the front, the shining wood of the pew backs shining off around her. Her hair was long and blonde-streaked-with-grey. From where I sat in the back she looked young. Her face was full of wrinkles and signs of a long life.
When time is passing people seize it and rush to avoid being crushed by it. They began to swarm through the doors and I was struck with how much they look like ants as they filed in, one after another, along the narrow aisle-ways and towards their personally assigned seats.

I met a fellow who had the whitest set of teeth I have seen. His bottom set were braced and the braces had pale blue bands on them. His hair was what you would expect to find sported by a less suave Clark Gable (who, as you would know better than I, was a film actor from the early 1920s through the early 1960s). He had an intriguing accent and some of his words were hard to understand. Apparently he is Mexican. Mexico is in South America. His teeth were very white.

There was a man. He flew in a rocket ship. He cannot tell what ship. He cannot tell what year. He cannot tell with whom. He was fixed into an 800 pound suit and made the 18 minute fall from orbit to earth. He was badly burned due to a failed plan in the heat shield. I cannot tell you this man's last name. No one speaks of him. To him, this does not matter. He knows who he is and what he has done and what the world remembers of him and thinks of him is trivial. He is proud of all he has done. He loves his life. He regrets little or nothing. Everything has a meaning to him. Everything he has done has led him to where he is.
This is the man that defines everything Human.

Noted things of interest:
Getting along without a camera, though I really only had one that wasn't really mine for less than a year, is quite tiresome. I think I enjoyed taking photos. I should really learn to be more careful with things expensive and try hard to be less destructive.

Notes on Being Human:
People respect you more when they do not know you for who you are but for who they perceive you.
It is easier to be who you are not than to be who you truly are.