“Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”

― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Thursday, March 28, 2002

Walking at night

I worked late each day this week to build up enough time to leave early today. I’ll take a day of vacation tomorrow – the kids are out of school for Good Friday. We’ll try to get in a camping trip – taking along one of Nick’s friends and meeting another family with three kids at the campsite – a couple of kids from Nick’s soccer team and some extra brothers and sisters. We didn’t want to drive very far so we decided to go back to Bonham, a small State Park (only twenty or so campsites) that we visited back in October.

The drive out and setting up the camp was uneventful – I’ve finally figured out how to hook up the new popup, work the hitch without an hour or so of cussing and struggling.

We set up and started a big campfire. I showed a kid how to write his name in the air with a glowing stick – shove the end in the fire, down in the red glowing coals (the hottest part) and then flick it around in the dark night of the woods. I know I’ll regret that – kids can’t resist messing with a campfire – they don’t need any encouragement.

As everyone settled down for the night, I left the smells of the campfire to go walking along the road that circles the small lake in the park. One of my favorite things to do when camping is a long walk in the dark. I like to let my eyes get used to the dark and let my ears get used to the subtle sounds of the nocturnal forest. Most of the road was closed to vehicles – metal gates locked across the tarmac (I don’t know why) but I can walk around a gate. With the full moon mostly out, surrounded by a ghostly ring (storms are predicted) and only a few clouds skidding past – it was a nice bright flashlightless stroll. The peaceful quiet was broken by an SUV that roared off the highway spitting gravel and sped around the dark roads for one circuit before squealing back out of the park. Otherwise, it was quiet with branches waving against the sky, slightly rustling as the dark shadow of an owl flew out.

As I reached the far side of the lake, a spot where some low, swampy woods border an open pasture beyond the fence that marks the park boundary a dark shape shuffled across the road ahead of me. I’m not sure what kind of animal it was. A skunk? It looked sort of like a skunk but after I walked past something splashed into the lake with a loud sploosh so maybe it was a beaver or a muskrat or even a nutria.

If I had brought a flashlight I could have shined it on the creature and figured out for sure what it was. I sort of like not knowing, though.

And now, a piece of flash fiction for today:

The Ghost by MD Smith IV

from Flash Fiction Magazine

MD Smith IV Homepage

“i made myself a snowball

As perfect as can be.

I thought I’d keep it as a pet,

And let it sleep with me.

I made it some pajamas

And a pillow for it’s head.

Then last night it ran away,

But first – It wet the bed.”

― Shel Silverstein

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Sunday, August 23, 1998

hold the chicken

I had big plans for today. I wanted to get up extra early and go bike riding downtown. I wanted to spend several hours writing. I wanted to start on the garage enclosure project. I didn’t do any of that.

It was tough pulling myself out of bed. Tired and sore, I flopped around the house, getting nothing done. I couldn’t even get up enough energy to scrub out K’nex and Mortimer’s (pronounced More-Timer) aquarium, and I feel bad about that. They do seem to perk up when I clean their little world.

Before I even knew what hit me, it was early afternoon and the kids had a birthday party to go to. Our Sunday volleyball games were scheduled for today too, so the plan was for me to make a token appearance at the birthday party (held at KidsQuest, a local park) and then head out to our friend’s house with some food.

When I showed up, though, the kids had other plans. There is a little triangle of dense woods and it was insisted by the under-ten set that I take them all on a hike through the trees. So I did. Rambling down the rough trails with a dozen little ones. The copse is usually thick and green, cool and humid, but the summer drought has taken its toll. The trees have lost most of their leaves and what is left is droopy and thin, the trails are wide and dry-packed.

We looped around through the faux wilderness for awhile and then I returned them all to the party and slipped off during the Opening of the Gifts.

It was fun to play volleyball again, we haven’t been able to get it in for several weeks. It was too hot, of course, and there was no breeze, and with the school year here, we all had to go home early, so we didn’t play as many games as usual. That’s fine, maybe I’ll be able to type this week, the last time I hurt my hands and arms enough to pain me for ten days.

Now it’s late, the TV’s on. I was going to write an entry about how I didn’t get anything done today, but I guess, looking back, I actually did something. Still, I sit here, the specter of the upcoming work week bearing down, I wish I had more time.

…. Right there, I took a pause, Five Easy Pieces is on the tube, Jack Nicholson is badgering the waitress, trying to get toast with his omelet. I love that scene. For all his rebellion, though, he never did get his toast.

It comes to that, doesn’t it. Do you want to rebel, or do you just want to eat some breakfast.

And now, a piece of flash fiction for today:

She Titles the Email “Things are Moving Along” by Caitlin Scarano

from Brevity

Caitlin Scarano Homepage

“The toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day seemed special in some way, it would toast an imaginary English muffin.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday November 06, 2000

Tropical

I woke up and lay there in bed, in the darkness. Thinking it was time to go to work I craned to look at the clock, but it was only three AM. While I restlessly padded around the dark and quiet house the dog looked at me through half-lidded eyes before he sighed and went back to sleep, convinced I wasn’t up to anything interesting. I tried the TV – they were selling kitchen appliances, loading whole chickens into rotisserie grills. The audience ooohed and aaahed. They couldn’t believe the price.

This wasn’t working so I gulped down a glass of milk and went back to bed. I curled up with stress, worrying about the upcoming workday – things I needed to do and don’t know how I’ll get done. My stomach churned, my palms burned, I tossed and turned.

One stress relieving technique is to have a place in your mind, a place to go, a safe harbor, an imaginary retreat. I have one, modeled on a real place from far away and now long gone.

It’s a simple boat dock, a swimming dock mostly, remembered from my youth on Lake Gatun, in Panama. In my mind I imagine the steep walk down the rough trail through the jungle to the lake. In real life it was rare to walk this without getting bit by a tropical ant or stung by some jungle bee – but in my mind they don’t attack.

The dock is crude, made of pallets and other thrown-away wood, attached to old metal drums. No boat is tied up today – a couple of handmade wooden canoes are upside down, pulled into some thick greenery at the water’s edge. Everything is green; the jungle is alive. There’s a big tree leaning way out with a rope swing. Giant lizards sit in the tree. I pull the rope back and climb with it a little way up the muddy slope – then swing out and drop into the lake.

The water is warm, tropical green, fragrant. I swim on my back out toward the center of the inlet then dive down, holding my breath frog-kicking down until my ears pop. Rising, breaking the surface, I turn and in a few strokes I’m back to the dock, climbing up, and stretching out, resting there for a few minutes.

Of course, this place didn’t really exist exactly like that – my memory has molded it. What did exist is long gone, even the base I lived on has disappeared along with the entire Canal Zone.

In my mind, though, I’m there for a few minutes at least. I smile a little smile.

The alarm clock went off.

And now, a piece of flash fiction for today:

Letting Go of the Dream by Pam Walters

from Flash Fiction Magazine

“The leaves were sun-baked lizards, stirring towards the sea that churned its chain of silver snakes, which would, if given half the chance, coil round, pull him out of this urban setting, vomit him on dry land.”
― Ann Quin, Berg

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Saturday, June 8, 2002

Trash

It was getting hot, really sticky and humid, as I walked around the point and stumbled into the mother lode. Working my way south along the shore I hadn’t found much; but here there was a north-facing shore and with the summertime hot southerly Texas wind all these cans and bottles were massed up – blown across Sunset Bay from the popular family picnic spots on the other side. Everything was mixed up in the big round clumps of grass that protect the shore or hidden in the gobs of bright green seaweed – mostly aluminum beer cans plus plastic soda bottles, thin Red Bull cans, and a plastic quart of oil.

I fell into a routine as I worked along the shore. I’d use the grabber-a wooden pole with a little swivel handle that pulled on a thin rod that worked the flimsy pair of plastic-coated jaws on the far end-to grab the cans and bottles and lift them out of the vegetation. I’d line them up on the steep bank, upside down – so the lake liquid inside, brown and green, would drain out. After a few minutes I’d return, pick up the aluminum cans for the blue bag, everything else in the black.

Across the cove I could see a group doing the same thing. They had a long aluminum pole with what looked like a net on the end and a whole swarm of kids running around with trash bags. Two guys in kayaks slid by moving into the thick vegetation of the inner cove itself, looking for floating tires and other crap, I suppose.

The ducks and geese that live there were getting pissed off at all this commotion, after convincing themselves that I didn’t have any stale bread to throw out. The circled and clucked and clacked and gave me the Evil Eye. A mother and five ducklings arced out of a hiding place behind a clump and swam off into a more protected part of the cove. Off to my left was a more open field lined with trees. A photographer was wandering around gazing up into the trees, looking for an artistic shot of the limbs, and eyeing me every now and then. I could tell he had no idea what I was up to. Past him, a couple had set up easels along the treeline of the thick bottomwoods, protected by a stretch of swampy ground. They were painting away, sometimes walking back and forth to see each other’s work. I wanted to work my way over to them and see what they were doing; but the wet ground kept me away. There was plenty of trash where I was anyway.

On past the painters was a colorful clot of balloons arcing over the road at a finish line. Lanes were set up, tables of water bottles, a big yellow elapsed time indicator, and an ambulance – set up and open with oxygen bottles, gurney, and a couple of bored-looking paramedics in blue uniforms. When I first arrived a flashing police car had escorted the winning runner through and now the rest of the race was streaming by.

I’ve always been jealous of runners. Not of how they look, but of the fitness needed to do these races. Even when I was in good shape and riding my bike a lot I couldn’t run. I was a strong swimmer and thought about triathlons (God, that feels like so long ago) but my ankles and feet couldn’t hold up to the running. The constant pain of shinsplints was more than I could take.

An older woman runner went by, her safety-pinned race number flapping in the warm breeze. She was hoofing it as fast as she could with the finish line finally in sight, making a loud guttural huf huf huf as she ran. I turned back to the water and poked at another clump of lake grass that was making a tinkling, metallic sound as the waves washed over it and pulled a goodly mass of cans out from under the blades.

The cleanup was supposed to last until eleven, but it didn’t take me long until both my bags were bulging full. I was getting really overheated – most everybody had worn shorts and T-shirts but I wanted some protection from the nasty trash juices and fetid lake water so I had worn jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. I was spattered with brown mud thrown off when I pulled cans out of the lake – so I guess I had made the right decision. After putting my bulging trash bags (black for trash, blue for recyclables) in the proper spot I walked back north to the Bathhouse Cultural Center where I had parked my car.

A younger guy and his cute girlfriend were walking the other way, carrying trash grabbers like me. Their bags were still stuck in their pockets.
“Having any luck?” I asked.
“Nothing,” the guy said.
“Well, I’ve already been by here,” I said.
“You must have done a good job, there’s no trash left,” his girl said.
“Usually there’s stuff along here in the clumps of grass,” he said,” most people don’t want to get that close to the lake.”
“Keep going,” I said, “Around the point there should be plenty to pick up.”
I felt for the guy; I could tell he felt diminished by the fact that somebody had beat him to his favorite trash spot and cleaned it out before he could get to it.

The second Saturday of each month an organization called For The Love of the Lake sponsors a trash pickup of the lake. I’m going to make that a regular thing for me – I’ve spent so much time at White Rock over the years it’s not too much to give a little back.

I’ll spend my Saturday morning picking up trash. Once you go to school and get a real job – knock yourself out to be successful – whatever the hell that means – you end up doing the stuff that you dedicate your life to avoiding, for fun. You buy a car and spend your leisure time walking, running, or riding a bike. You buy a big house and spend your free time doing yard work, carpentry, or plumbing. I always worried that if I didn’t work hard I’d end up as a janitor – picking up trash.

And now, a short piece of autobiography for today:

Leaving School by Ann Quinn