Nature's Sweet Restorer

The stars had come out to play by the time we returned home from Winston-Salem where we had closed the Associated Artist's exhibit at Reynolda Village. It had been a long day and we wasted no time getting into bed to allow sweet nature to ravel up the sleeves of care. Somewhere in the night, in my dreams, I heard someone call my name.

"Did you hear that?" said a different voice from somewhere nearby and I was relieved to discover that it was Poopsie Wonder because, well, I'm sure I don't have to suggest the reason why. You can surely think of several good reasons on your own.

The first voice, let's call it Voice A, called again and, coming unexpectedly as it did in the middle of a peaceful summer night, it caused me to look at Ms. Wonder with wild surmise and she goggled at me with wild surmise. What rendered the thing so particularly unpleasant was that we had both jumped to the same conclusion. "It's your mother," Ms. Wonder gaggled as she switched on a lamp illuminating the clock on her night table that maintained the time at 12:30 AM.

I ambled to the top of the staircase and looked down at the specter in a cornflower blue nightshirt standing in the doorway to my mother's sitting room on the ground floor.

"Are you awake?" she asked out of concern for my safety should I stand at the top of a staircase while asleep. "Come here a minute," she said. When my mother says 'come here' it is not merely an invitation but more like a command from the centurion, a casual acquaintance of Jesus, who explained that when he said, 'Come,' they came. And so it is with me and my mother. I went.

Two hours later, after staunching the flow of blood from the motherly nose, and returning Reason to her throne, I was back upstairs and looking forward to returning to that dream where I was Bond and Ms. Wonder was Moneypenny. It promised to be diverting. I tilted the nightcap down toward the right eye, which makes all the difference.

A minute later I was in bed and within seconds I was joined by Abbie Hoffman, that tuxedoed American shorthair, who assumed his familiar position at my right side. It was now 2:30 AM and I was not exactly in the mood for a social reunion. I couldn't help but feel that he could have chosen a better time to get chummy. Still, not wanting to seem un-civil, I gave his chin a scratch.

He rearranged the cardinal points, anterior and posterior, and the expression on his map gave me to believe that something was not satisfactory. He seemed to be doing a bit of princess-and-the-peaing. I didn't like it. I was anxious to get down to some tired nature's sweet restoring. He stood, stretched, and moved to the foot of the bed, which I was all in favor of, but it wasn't to last. He returned to my side and I gave his rump a pat hoping that he'd gotten everything sorted out but no, it was another bust. He moved to the foot of the bed again but immediately returned to my side.

"I know where this is leading," I said, "and you're singing the wrong tune. You feel that old compunction to give voice to the wildness that sleeps in your breast but I ask you, is it wise? I know that you tell yourself that you can stop with one but isn't it the first yowl that does all the damage?"

"I don't have a problem," he said or, if he didn't actually say it, he gave me a look that did. "I'm not powerless in the matter you know. I howl because I enjoy the sound."

"Oh, what a tangled web," I said and I meant it to sting. "Is this the Hoffman spirit? Is this the American shorthair who used to play feathered stick with me when he was just so high?"

He didn't answer but went straight to his work, jumping from the bed and rushing downstairs where he took up position in the foyer. Moments later the first pleading cry floated up the stairwell. I'm not certain but it could be that a few passionate words spoken in haste escaped from me as I headed to the guest room.

Now, whether or not I would have achieved the dream state in that four-poster that filled the room I cannot say. This is the same bed I slept in as a young boy before my sister moved from her crib and I was awarded the living room sofa. It has been several years since I tried to actually sleep in this family heirloom and I found that a double bed no longer fits the Genome chassis. I guess I counted no more than a few dozen herds of sheep before remembering several pleasant nights spent on the sofa on the screened porch.

It was with me the work of an instant to be in position on that porch, a freshly brewed cup of ginger tea in hand, and the string lights turned on for mood. I sampled the tea. Perfect.

You know that feeling you sometimes get that someone is looking at you? I had it now. I was out in the open air with a night garden and a cypress grove just a few feet away and so I reasoned that there were probably lots of creatures of the night gazing in my direction. Then I heard a small, quiet voice address me from somewhere nearby.

"Whatch'ya doin'?"

In the dim light, I could just make out the form and color of the Siamese kitten that lives in the house on the hill behind the Hall.

"Oh, it's you, Lucy," I said cordially because I am partial to this little blue-eyed girl. "I'm planning to sleep out here tonight."

"Sorry to disturb you, sir," she said.

"Not at all," I said. "What are you doing out here?"

"I saw the lights come on," she said. "I like to sleep on this tabletop," she added as she walked a full circle and then sat looking at me.

"Nice night," I said.

"Bit warm," said she.

"Just so," I said and then the message in her recent words made themselves clear and I turned off the lights. "Well, good night, kitten."

"Good night, sir."

Despite the fact that the night was unusually warm, I found myself experiencing a soothing drowsiness just about the time the scratching began. I didn't have to look to know that the scratcher was Uma, Empress of Chatsford. Hanging out on the porch is a passion with this brindled lady and looking through the French doors to see me out here had gotten right up her nose.

I had two options as I saw it. I could either allow her onto the porch and wait for her to complete a patrol of the perimeter to secure the space, or I could move to the garage and sleep in the car. I didn't take time to weigh the options. I opened the door. But what to my wondering eyes did she do but rush to the other end of the kitchen where she stopped and looked back over her shoulder at me as if to say, 'Come.'

"What's wrong, Uma? Is Timmie in trouble?" I asked.

She twittered something under her breath sounding a little like, "Don't be an ass, it's time for breakfast." And in that moment I saw the soft, rosy light of dawn flooding the atrium behind her and I realized that another day was beginning in south Durham. It's just another example of what I always say. Life comes fast and hard and one must be ready for anything, don't you agree?

Morning Can Wait

"Are you all right? " asked Ms Wonder.

"I'm fine," I said without hesitation for the probability of being correct is one in two; not bad odds; and the Genome is a sporting man if he is a day.

It's my custom to rise at 5:30 each morning to feed the inside cats first and then the outside, to sluice the torso, fuel the mitochondria, and then hie for the open spaces of Dulce in the Sutton Station. 

To reach the morning, of course, you must practice the proven proverb of early to bed and continue there through the small hours, eventually arriving at the gates of a new dawn. But you probably knew that already.

The past evening found me continually awake with a song playing on the lips of the inner man. Does that happen to you? A song that you can't seem to shut off. If I remember correctly, it was a tune called, "I Have a Motorcar With a Horn That Goes Toot-toot." Couldn't get it out of my head.

I arose long before I arrived at the gates of dawn and by the time  I entered the salle de bain I observed in the mirror a man of my own age but not half as good looking. It was his eyes that arrested the attention. They were reddish in color and sagged beneath. The lazy eyelids were reminiscent of the Italian crooners of my youth.

The fact that I'd heard a young man driving an Audi refer to me the day before as a goggle-eyed turkey allowed me to recognize the man in the looking glass. Few turkeys have goggled as well as this specimen and any turkey would have been proud to do so.

"At least you're clean and sober," I said to the newcomer.

"Why shouldn't I be sober?" he said.

"I'm not complaining," I said, "I'm just saying."

"Having trouble sleeping is one of the textbook symptoms of overdone anxiety brought on by manic mental activity," he said. "Can you suggest anything that might account for it?"

"Well..."

"What? Say it!" he said.

"Is loopiness hereditary?" I said.

"It can be."

"Noses are," I said just to point out that some things are passed along from one to another generation.

"True," he said.

"This beezer of mine has come down through the ages," I said.

"Indeed?"

"My father had it; my grandfather had it; and my great grandfather had it. It accompanied my ancestors to Agincourt," I said.

"Were they at Agincourt?"

I nodded. "They came over with the Conqueror. My ancestor was a nephew."

"Would you say they were all dotty?" he said.

"Possibly," I said. "The Conqueror's sister's kid accepted a governing post in Hungary."

"I see," he said seeming to consider the pros and cons suggested by this fact. "How about your father? Did he have any structural weaknesses?"

"No, Dad was all right. He collected Zane Gray novels."

"He didn't think that he was Zane Gray?"

"No, certainly not," I said.

"That's all right then. Yes, I think I know the source of your problem."

"What?"

"It's the same fate that befalls many people who stand over six feet. You see, the heart has evolved over the millennia to pump blood and oxygen into a head that is five feet, eight inches off the floor. Stands to reason then that a brain so far away from the heart as yours can't possibly function properly."

I suddenly began to see this man in a different light. I didn't like the tone. All wrong as far as I was concerned.

"That's your opinion is it?" I said with more than a little topspin.

"The medical term is sublunary medulla oblongata diathesis."

"You made that up, you goggle-eyed turkey," I said.

"Very possibly," he said, "but I can't stand here arguing with you all day. I have writing to do."

I started visibly at these words. I realized that what he spoke was soothe and it was with me the work of an instant to gather the quills, refill the ink pot, roll up the sleeves and get straight to work. Maybe a nap in the afternoon you think?

Never Give Up

It was a great day in Southport, then it wasn't a great day, but then it was great again. The weather was consistently great; the sun shown, the breezes cooled, the rain showers refreshed. A squall blew in while we were seated on the covered deck of a dockside seafood restaurant and made the experience even more special for we love a big blow on the coast. The place we stayed for the week was nice too and it was located in the yacht basin--within walking distance of the cafe district and the riverfront.

Southport sits at the confluence of the Cape Fear River and the Intracoastal Waterway. From the river-front park, you can look out past Bald Head Island right into the face of the Atlantic. So if the weather was great and the location was great, I can hear you asking, why didn't we have a great time?

If you are a follower of this blog, you're aware that I have strong emotional attachments to my animals. I'm one of the many who suffer from extreme mood fluctuations and my cats help to keep me stable. When one of them is ill I tend to take it hard. I was taking it hard in Southport.

The two-year-old Eddy, a rescue cat that we've had since he was a ball of fur, has been sick and we took him with us thinking that he would be less stressed than spending the week in a boarding facility. He became more ill while we were in Southport. Two visits to the vet and a couple of not-insignificant procedures later, he was recuperating in the townhouse.

Near the end of the week, Eddy had shown no signs of improvement and I was in the deep blue, down at the depths where sunlight doesn't penetrate. To relieve some of the stress I began walking toward the waterway because the breezes were coming from that direction and the wind on my face cooled the fevered brow.

The wind picked up and by the time I was at the water's edge, the wind was near gale force. 

I had to lean into the wind to keep from being blown backward. A dark wall of rain was moving toward me, so heavy that Bald Head Island was all but obscured. Lightning bolts flashed in the darkness. I'll bet you know how I felt. While down and wallowing on the ground, the Universe had decided to kick me with a hurricane-strength blow and a monsoon drenching.

Those who know me best will tell you that my motto is to live life on life's terms. I generally take whatever comes along and find a way to live with it. But sometimes life gets a little too zealous. Princess Amy, the name I've given to my hyper-sensitive amygdala, sometimes reads dramatic events as an invitation to roll up her sleeves and get down to it. She was doing so now.

If "life on life's terms" is my motto, then "fierce qigong" is my modus operandi. Standing on that sea wall, I looked the coming storm directly in the eye with an unwavering, lazy-eyed gaze. Although buffeted by the wind, I nonchalantly shot the cuffs and flicked a speck of dust off the exquisite Mechlin lace, and addressed the Universe like this:

"Do your worst, old girl. Blow with all your might. It's all in vain of course because the Genome is more than enough for whatever you've got. As long as there is breath in this body, I am stronger than the wind. As long as there is blood in my veins, the torrents are like a few drops in the ocean. As long as there is heat in my body, the lightning is no more than a flash.

In all the Universe, in all of time since the Big Bang, there is nothing to equal the human experience. I am a part of the ultimate form in all of creation. Even the angels are envious of man. I am enough for whatever life brings my way and I will never surrender. So give it all you've got. I will be here when you are out of breath and completely wrung out. I will be here when the sun shines tomorrow and you are nothing but a memory."

The wind became quieter and once more refreshing as I walked back to the townhome. The rain held off until I was at the front porch. When I went inside to check on Eddy, I found that he was feeling much better and so was I.

Life comes hard and fast--be ready for it.

The Going Forth

Nothing but stars as I look out into the blackness from my second-floor porch. It's like looking into the gulf between galaxies, into the chill deeps of space where there is nothing but a random molecule or a fragment of rock that escaped from some pack of rogue asteroids. I read that somewhere, probably Terry Pratchett. What I was actually gazing into was the stellar depths of cafe lights that line the streets of Southport and that nearby galaxy was the location of tonight's filming of Under the Dome.

I woke around midnight to the sound of total quiet. It's loud, total quiet is. Back home in the SoDu, I would associate it with someone who is intentionally making no noise outside my bedroom door. Here, at the southeastern end of North Carolina--on a clear day, we can see all the way to Morocco--it's just the sound that's left when the sea breezes blow the creaks and goons of the fishing fleet up the Cape Fear River to Wilmington.

Standing at the porch railing, the cool breeze on my face, I feel an ancient call--the call to come into the darkness and see the world in a different light. Walking the streets under the boughs of ancient oaks is not the same experience in the dark that it is each morning and evening when I take my constitutional. It's just a little spooky. They do ghost tours here as they do in all colonial-era communities.

I dressed quickly but not carelessly because it would be an insult to startle another night visitor, encountered by chance on my outing if I were badly dressed. My outfit is dark gray, the most stealthy color for the night. Never wear black if you want to remain unseen because the night isn't black, it's a collage of dark grays. If being discovered badly dressed is insulting to another visitor, or homeowner for that matter, it would be embarrassing to be questioned by an officer of the law and this is something to take into consideration when planning to survey the filming of a TV program from the rooftops of a coastal village.

As far as I know, and I haven't made an exhaustive search, but as far as I know, it isn't unlawful to traverse the rooftops. Ms. Wonder would know but I hesitate to ask because what I do is traditional with me and I love tradition.

It is more than tradition that compels me to climb and look down upon, for I have come to Southport to find answers to questions to puzzling questions. Questions like why have tortoises never developed a philosophy and why do I feel like one of the sacrificial goats when it comes to religion and why didn't my vet talk to me about feline idiopathic chronic cystitis? If you wonder why Southport then I'm afraid you have me in deep waters there. I don't understand it myself but Wonder assures me that if I can find the answers anywhere, I will find them here. It is perhaps this promise that keeps sleep away tonight.

So this is it. The first night in Southport. Dressed in my dark gray qigong clothes, I lift one leg over the railing and grab the support post to descend to street level. I prefer using downspouts for this maneuver but the house I'm in has none. When I began my rooftop explorations years ago, many of the buildings still had waterspouts made of tile. Those pipes would support an elephant. Those were the good old days.

Once on the ground, I moved quickly through the shadows, ever vigilant for late-night dog walkers. They do exist. A half-block from the High Street, I found what I was looking for, a sturdy drainpipe that led to a flat roof overlooking the riverfront park where the film crew is busy. Eureka! The principle of displacement.

There was a real breeze now, as refreshing as a cool shower and I was encouraged to quicken my pace. It was quite dark, not black but almost, but I didn't hesitate--I went straight to my work, hand over hand, foot over foot until I reached the end of the pipe only to realize that it wasn't all there. In the darkness, I grabbed air and the follow-through almost loosened my grip completely.

Ms. Wonder has early and often pointed out the difference between improbable and impossible and she has remarked just as often that it is unwise to confuse the two. I found no reason to disagree with the honest woman. A close brush with critical injury and worse is accompanied by the quick flash before the mind's eye of past lives and the life that flashed before mine was of the French naval officer, captured and held by the British in a high tower isolated in a forest. That officer made his escape by shinnying down the downspout. Perhaps that's why I feel compelled to make my escapes down the water pipe when the situation calls for leaving without stopping to pack.

It's well-known that bumping elbows with disaster sharpens the senses to excruciating awareness of detail and so it was with me. When my hand grasped empty air and I felt myself falling back into the same, I became intensely aware of my surroundings. And when I had regained my balance and placed my foot back on solid ground, I gazed above me first at the lights ringing the top of the building, and then I scanned the branches of live oaks that shadowed me, feeling once more the cool breeze on my face. But it wasn't the same.

Something else I've read came to mind, something like, "this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof greeted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." It wasn't just the near stinker from falling off the drainpipe. The film crew had finished long ago and the breeze from the fishing fleet downriver smelled of dead fish.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow. It will be different tomorrow.

Grand Theory of Everything

We couldn't enter the wizarding realms in a normal car so Spring, Glady's agent, picked us up in her yellow Volkswagen Beatle for the short trip to Kadabra where we had an appointment to discuss the disappearance before it became headline news. I refer to the disappearance of Gladys, not Spring, who as far as I'm aware is still among those present.

If you follow this journal with any regularity, then you remember that the Witch of Woodcroft went missing soon after agreeing to help me with a travel article I'm writing for the Carolina Roads e-magazine. Spring, being her agent, was the only person I could think of who might have a clue to her whereabouts. People become anxious when they hear that wizards are missing and it's just the kind of stuff that network TV loves to strew about.

To get to Kadabra from Chadsford Hall, you travel south and as soon as you cross the narrow ribbon of Interstate 40, which technically belongs to the Kingdom of the United States, you re-enter the SoDu at Highway 54. We soon came to our destination, which was hidden behind a mountain of mulch, and when the driveway ended, Ms. Wonder said, "Why, this is Parkwood!"

"To the uninitiated, it is," said Spring.

The Volkswagen decanted us onto the lawn and Spring led us onto the porch where two wizards were waiting. The one lying on the railing welcomed us with a wide yawn and a good, long stretch. It made me want to stretch too and I did a little. The other was asleep in a chair.

"You will sit there," said Spring indicating the chair with the sleeping wizard, which she picked up and pressed her face into his tummy. There was a sound like a jack of clubs that had been clothes-pined to a bicycle spoke. I assumed the sound came from Spring. I've never heard a wizard make that sound.

"And you will sit there," she said to Wonder.

I explained to Wonder that Spring was what is known as a pre-cog and often has glimpses of the future. This skill of hers is the reason I'd sought her out to help me find Gladys.

No sooner had we taken our places at the table, than a door opened off stage and a head appeared above a black tee bearing the words Duck Dynasty.

"Can I offer you cereal?" said the head.

"I'm good," I said, "I cerealed before leaving home."

Ms. Wonder said nothing but directed her headlights, open-mouthed, at the talking head. I thought it must be the tee but Spring, who is much more attuned to these matters, immediately recognized the cause of the imitation of Lot's wife by the usually unshakable Wonder.

"It's quite all right," she said to Wonder, "perfectly harmless. A pussycat really."

The Wonder seemed to have gotten her tongue entangled with her tonsils for she said something like, "Mfjfhhg."

"He's the Higgs Boson," said Spring. "Pay him no mind."

"Higgs Boston?" said the Wonder after getting the vocal instruments working again.

"Boson. Higgs Boson. The particle at the end of the universe. It's quite the rage in particle physicist circles. All of them are searching for it."

"Why," said the Wonder and I must admit to feelings that were somewhat in harmony with hers. Why indeed? is what I asked myself.

"You have me there," said Spring. "It has something to do with the Unified Theory, whatever that is. I believe it's expected to connect the quantum field with the Newtonian world.

"Ah," I declared as if that explained things perfectly. I looked at the Boson who nodded and smiled in agreement.

"Of course," Spring went on to say, "they've been searching for forty years but they haven't found it yet because the mind refuses to see anything that doesn't fit with its notion of reality. I've seen the Boson walk through a crowded room and no one pays any attention to him at all."

"That's odd," said Wonder. "So why do they think it exists at all?"

"Mathematical hunch," said Spring.

"Excuse me?"

"Well, they have been trying to prove its existence mathematically but they have only been able to get so close. It's as though the formulas have a gut feeling that it's there somewhere."

"A mathematical sixth sense," I ventured.

"Something like that," said Spring.

"I'm being bitten by mosquitoes," Wonder said.

"Yeah, there is that," said the Boson, "and I'm afraid I can't help you find Gladys either. I don't have a clue where she is."

"Oh hell," I said. "It's going to be another one of those days. Just one damned thing after another."

"Have you thought of getting the Mysterious X to help?" said the Boson.

"I'm not familiar with that one," I said. "What does he specialize in?" I said.

"Yeah well, that's the mystery too I guess," said the Boson, "but I happen to know he's hard up for cash. Inexplicable entities have to eat too."

"I'll give it some thought," I said.

When Spring dropped us off at home, she asked, "What's that article about anyway?"

"Southport," I said. "We're going to be there for a few days. I'll work on my book and Wonder plans to work on her song, but that should still leave plenty of time for a travel story too."

"Ms. Wonder is writing on a song?"

"Yeah, she's reading a book called Songwriting: The Essential Guide to lyric form and structure. It's a little scary."

"Oh goody, she said. "Ms. Wonder may be inspired to do one of those Russian compositions like Stravinsky's Petrushka--you know sawdust puppets coming to life and whatnot."

"Now that would be dramatic," I said as she drove away. Wonder was already inside so I walked up the steps to the front door thinking about St. Petersburg. Gladys would have to wait.