The Story

The figure of the old woman sat hunched in front of the fire patiently as each of the children seated around her on the grass realized she was going to begin telling them a story soon. It was the same way each full moon. A handful of children from around the small farming village in northern Ireland would get permission from their parents to go see the old wise woman Elizabeth in her thatch roofed home up on the hill in the woods just on the outskirts of town. She would be there at dusk, in the field across the dirt path leading up to her old wooden gate, waiting. There was always a bonfire lit in the middle of the old stone circle when the children arrived. None of them had ever seen her build the fire, and she certainly had never added any wood to the fire. That wasn't the only oddity about Elizabeth. Strange and wonderful things happened to people around her, and although some of the villagers called her "witch" or "hag", most simply thought of her as wise old Elizabeth.

On the lunar calendar, there exists no concept of a blue moon. Whether it was just a coincidence or not that tonight's full moon was the second of the month, the children said to their children many years later, they will never know. All they could say for sure was that on that particular night, the story was unlike any of the other stories the old crone had ever told them. It was also the last time they ever saw her. The story, Beldam Elizabeth told them, was the most important Story they would ever hear from her. It was told to her by her own mother when she was just a girl, and this was the first time she had repeated it to anyone else. Normally, she said, the story was only to be shared by a mother to her daughter on the first full moon after she came of age, but since she was barren, this was the way it must happen. She had decided it must be this way. "The time has come for me to pass along The Story to a new generation of Story Keepers," she said, "And I don't take no stock in that mother-daughter nonsense."

She chuckled, "Boys is good as girls to keep the Story goin'. Besides, there's older rules for these types o' things."

The sky was clear that night. The stars blanketing the heavens sang a different song than usual, it seemed to the children; they were right. The stars sang along in harmony with old lady Elizabeth as she told the children her Story, which was her mother's story and her mother's mother's mother's story. They were twinkling in time to the cadence of her voice as the words spilled from her lips like the tongues of flame from the fire in front of her. For hundreds of years, the tradition was to pass the story from mother to daughter, but that wasn't really a rule. If there were any rules, the only one was that the story must be told; it must be kept alive. It wasn't until some of the children began to grow old and die that the remaining children began to understand why that was of such importance.

"I'd say to yeh, take heed to my Story, but yeh kin try to forget it, if yeh like. Won't work noways, anyhow. The Story will resonate whether yeh want it er not."

Lazarus

The mind that lay dormant—not dead—in the corpse of Lazarus Jacobi was not Lazarus Jacobi. His body lay pristine although the lettering had long since faded from the simple granite stone that marked the forgotten graveside. It could have been just like any other stone in the area, the product of bygone eras when glaciers had carved their way through the valleys, deepening their sides and leaving stones scattered about like crumbs. It could have been any stone, except that this stone was the wrong kind of granite. And, although it was so severely weathered as to remove any evidence of human tools, the thing had far too regular a look to it. No, the unfortunate truth was that although Jacobi's body lay dead, his mind had found a new body among us— unfortunate, because of the displaced mind that now lay imprisoned in his tomb. For Jacobi, however, there was no fortune to be considered, as this had always been his gambit.

そうかと言って、(sou ka to itte)

心で雪がふっていると、
アナタに会えてよかった。
そうかと言って？
山が高いでしょう？
幅の広い川は
ゆっくりと流れる？
そうかと言って、
心で雪がふっていると、
アナタに会ってよかった。

kokoro de yuki ga futteiru to,
anata ni aete yokatta.
sou ka to itte?
yama ga takai deshou?
haba no hiroi kawa wa
yukkuri to naｇareru?
sou ka to itte,
kokoro de yuki ga futteiru to,
anata ni atte yokatta.

Although it is snowing in my heart,
I am glad I was able to meet you.
Did I say, "Oh, is that so?"
Are not the mountains high?
Do wide rivers
flow with patience?
Even if that's true,
Although it is snowing in my heart,
I am glad I met you.

Things that fluctuate

• Sine Waves
• The price of bonds
• Water against the side of a boat
• The reed of a woodwind
• The temperature at dusk
• The voice of one who bears bad news
  
• A pubescent teenager's mood
• The number friends one has
• A fish's tail
• One who must make a difficult decision
• The heart of a gold digger whose lover is now penniless
  

Out of the City and Into the Sky

High on a mountainside overlooking the city of Kyoto. We were climbing towards a secluded Shinto shrine, but took a side path away from the main road. Plunging down slightly into a bamboo forest, in the distance, the only sound a lone nightingale's song, slow as it echoes through the dense one hundred foot stalks of bamboo the thickness of oak trees. Continuing, the path narrows and the bamboo begins to crush us, asking why we are invading this holy space. Finally, a clearing in in the grass forest. An altar lies in front of us. On it, a round stone rests, cradled on a stand. On the edge of the altar, an inscription in Kanji: Guess the weight, and lift the stone. If we guess correctly and lift with the right amount of effort, eternal salvation in the Western paradise awaits us. If wrong, our journey must continue.

Were we right? I do not know. Returning to the main path, we begin to encounter hundreds of vermilion wooden gates. Passing through each gate purifies our souls as we approach the main shrine. A creek to our left runs swiftly down the slope as our climb steepens. The stone steps we are mounting are covered in green moss. As we near the top, the sun breaks through the darkness and floods our eyes with light. Finally, at the summit of the steps: a green lake surrounded by an ancient mossy forest. Alas, the path curves to the left and continues up the mountainside.

A Letter

To whom it may concern,
My dear, I love you.
Enclosed, please find
a heart of blue construction paper
with red crayon on top
collated and in triplicate.
Please submit your comments
questions, and concerns
by COB Sunday.
Most cordially,
Sincerely,
Yours truly,
Love,
Me

The Book

The octagonal room before me was lit only from the hallway I occupied. The dust around me stirred and fell again, slowly. In the middle of the hardwood floor in front of me, on the top of a small claw-footed table, there lay a leather-bound volume with no writing or markings on the outside. I brashly took a first step across the threshold. The floor groaned under my foot and moaned again as I backed away again quickly, realizing my foolishness. The old oak door frame loomed ahead of me like a portal to a mausoleum. The room before me exhaled as it shrank from the life with which I disturbed its somnolence. I backed further away.

Pausing at first to ponder what had just transpired, I approached the room with less confidence than before. This time, I stopped short of the threshold and fingered the timber door frame. Feeling its connection to the floor, I felt my way through the boards to the foot of the table and then up to the object which it carried. The book was there; it was real. I could feel it there. After the reaction I felt from the room when I first attempted to cross the threshold, I decided an experiment was an order. Without breaking the connection to the table, I willed a green sprout with a single leaf to twist its way out of one of the claw feet of the table. There was a loud clap of thunder and centuries of dust and wooden splinters scoured my face as I struggled to protect my eyes with my forearm. The table and book remained, unaffected, but the room had changed.

Now, a floor of white granite lay beyond the old oak threshold. Etched into it were symbols and geometry unknown to mankind for millennia. The room must have been built around this platform and enchanted to conceal its existence. As the dust began to once again settle indignantly, there was a sound I identified as a descending Shepherd tone, but I couldn't identify the source. Eventually it became clear to me that the granite blocks were humming a deep tone produced by a charge of energy similar to the old electrical transformers that sat on the ground near my childhood home. Every minute or so, one of the lines or symbols on the floor flickered with an almost invisible flame. I dared not cross the threshold a second time. Instead, as though to blow a kiss, I blew back into place my best attempt to replicate the illusion of the room as it was originally. Being the only person in the house offered me little confidence that I was alone. Needing to take time to research how to gain access to the room with the book, and as I was too tired to further my explorations of this manor built along the cold banks of Loch Raven, I resolved to return to my bed chamber and sleep out the remainder of the night.