Twelve

I gave the earth my 

Heart under the lilac arch 

On a summers day

Late-Summer Afternoon

Sun-warmed face.
Lidded eyes.
The warm, kaleidoscope dark.
Pulsing.
Bright blurry fireworks.
The wind in ears.
Isolated mind,
Cogs whirring.

Open.
Colorblind,
Everything a tint of blue.
All blue.
Do other colors exist?
Look around, searching.
An orange cooler,
Reassurance of sight. 

Awake, under the sky

There's a thunderstorm outside my window.
We watched it from our back porch,
lightning turning night to day in the bed-sheet clouds.
Rain caught up to us over our end of the valley,
wind whipping the trees in an energetic dance
of thrashing, coin-like leaves.
I am inside, almost ready to sleep, noises creaking
and shutting and humming all around as my family
readies for comfortable, dry sleep
under the sky, awake. 

Mini Memoir

What experiences am I proud of, Facebook?
What a strange question...

I am proud of the Summer I made friends with two fantastic people, and that same Summer I found six four leaf clovers, two of them in one of the fantastic people's back yard.
I am proud of the small patchwork quilt I made in 2009 by myself, and the baby quilt I made for my youngest sister. I raced to hand-finish the edging the night she was born; now she is six, my brown-eyed shadow.
I am proud of the garden I grew four blocks down the street from my house last summer, and I am proud of the garden I am tending in my backyard this year.
I am proud of my experience participating in a scholar class when I was fourteen; I didn't earn any gold stars for their chart, but I worked hard in everything I did and gained a lot of insight into World War II and the life of my heartfelt book-friend, Anne Frank.
I am proud that I built my own longboard with the help of my good friend, and I am proud that I learned how to ride it in spite of my awkwardness and timidity.
I am proud that I went to the DLD alone to get my Learners Permit, and that I studied so hard with tools I found on the internet in order to barely pass the test; but pass the test I did.
I am proud of my experience growing up the eldest of two, then four, then nine children.

I've never won any medals or awards, I've never accomplished anything stunningly grand, I've never had a grueling job in a competitive workplace, I haven't attended an high-ranking private high school or traveled to another country; but what I'm saying is; I have my little experiences that mean a lot to me, and I don't intend to play them down next to what I imagine to be societies values and milestones.
I am quite content to live a small life, and I am equally content to pursue the things I consider big and worthwhile to me.
Thanks for the question, Facebook, and though at first I started out critical of your inquiry, I enjoyed thoughtfully writing out what I am proud of. 

Garden

All of these were actually from a few weeks ago, unfortunately. 

Peppers and cucumbers.

Burgundy bush beans rows.

Beets

I think this picture is of my Swiss chard, not sure though. 

My lovely little horseshoe lettuce patch.

Close up of my lettuce when it was all cute and not too crowded like it is now.

Wearing a New Story, y'know, so many tones. All one has to do is pick, and write blind-sided

Hullo little one.
Perhaps this will be a letter of sorts? I began writing an essay before opening up a new draft. I got so far as to write two or three sentences but quickly gave it up as too complex a subject which also had no supporting evidence.

Should a letter contain a subject? Or at least a theme all throughout to bind the writing together into a whole, neatly tied at the end? I'm not entirely sure. Sometimes I'll just write everything, or a great deal of what is on my mind, and I'll find it leads itself back to the beginning, all neatly drawn together with no conscious effort on my part. I haven't done that in forever. I guess I lost my muse for a time, though that might be a melodramatic statement. Deep breath...
Anyway, I guess Summer is drawing near, if it is the passing of time you wish to hear about, an account of days; perhaps an account of the firsts of the season. I got my first significant sunburn planting my garden last Sunday. The work was good, the sunburn, not so much. It lingers on longer than I expected it to, but then, nothing seems to be exactly as I expect it to be; the lilacs, love; they smell a hundred times better than I remember them smelling. If only I could wear a perfume of lilacs... It wouldn't even have to be all year 'round...
Like I said, Summer is drawing near, the days grow long and hot, and the heads of the foxtail begin to dry out and flake apart. Bad news for me, I'm working a job weeding several blocks down the road, and foxtails are easier to pull out and keep contained when they are still green and supple.
The ground is drying out, muted colors creeping from the dirt up through the stalks of unwatered plants, the wide strip of weeds between our fence and the road turning brown and crunching underneath bare feet. Storks Bill curling onto itself while Cheat Grass drops its head-full of long seeds to the dust. The stream rages, dirty dun-colored, racing onwards to the North; snowmelt slipping away from our little valley to cities and towns beyond.
These are the things one notices as a product of being raised in the desert by parents anxious for the future, and empathetic to the living cycle all around. And there, I suppose, is my subject.
Yours,
Amoniel

Winter's last sigh

The floor of this old house
breathes foot-chilling cold
through its chipped linoleum
and pine planks,

like the earth expunging
the last winter air from its lungs,
awakening from five months' sleep.

My home,
-adobe flesh and wooden skeleton-
solid in place,
A wizened squatter covered
in clothes from many decades,

more connected with the life
in the soil than you might think;
the land's conduit

as the valley expels
the last chill of winter,
making room for Summer's warmth

Introspective Observation: buds on dead growth

It is strange to know that we're having fifty, almost sixty degree days in February. This month started out new-born in a blanket of white, but yesterday we played kickball with some friends at the old stone church, and I didn't need an actual coat until about 9:30 or 10:00 at night. I've heard tell that the cherry blossoms are blooming in Japan, and my dad's cousin's wife's flowers are already coming up in her yard up North. 

We've been about two months ahead of ourselves all year, in previous years too. Remember that June we had multiple wild fires all over my state? Utaha two months ahead and all that. Photographs of haunting sunsets and towering columns of grey smoke, white clouds of smoke boiling over our Eastern mountains. That Summer felt ominous and apocalyptic. But here we are now, roughly two years later, experiencing an early spring that feels like late fall in the winter. It's certainly something to think about, dear. 

The changes this world is going through --ecologically, politically and socially-- should be interesting to observe, and perhaps, to participate in. There's a lot of hope and beauty amongst the pain and corruption, growing in spite of or because of the things that seem so terribly wrong. 

One way to do one of those "looking back over the year" things...

Subject: Bridging the gaps of an evolving heart
After watching "DMT: the spirit molecule", having finished, started, and finished two crochet projects of the prettiest color. 10/10/12

This morning was lovely in so many ways, as I lay here, listening to "Secret on the moors" by David Arkenstone and remembering hanging out with Starchild and Yo at Starchild's apartment, I am happy. 10/23/12

Sledding at the cabin, underneath the full moon with my siblings. Everything so bright and beautiful and happy. December 28th 2012

Subject: The smell, sound, feel of rain. Utter bliss with siblings.
Running around the block, bare feet and socks slapping on the wet asphalt, one of my brothers took his shoes off at the start of the third black, barely in the faint orange light of the lamppost. Torthadiel, Erumeren, Hammer head and me. 4/1/13

Sigur Ros Untitiled No. 3 in my room, dark from the overcast sky outside. I am working on my bacterium story, happy to write unreigned, unrestrained. The song turned up as high as it can go, humming in my bones, sweet in my throat and loud in my ears, my heart rejoicing. 5/17/13

Subject: Contact from very dear old friends 3/28/13
Receiving an email forwarded by dad from our dear friends -- They say they have internet now and they'd like to skype with us!

Cultivate a life of your own, little one, and lead me on

What is my voice like to you?
What does this place feel like to you? Is it the same as how it feels to me?

I am so sloppy lately, I don't care to edit or try to edit or try to write well. I don't care. But still I write and some sort of beauty emerges, disfigured and fractured as it is, its voice slack, its posture bent and twisted and stooped.
I wrote a poem Wednesday that was that and more, but a couple of days later, it seemed endearing and maybe just a little bit courageous. It had built a life of its own independent from the lackluster breath i'd blown into it.

I'm feeling like multimedia today, nothing new, but now I've decided to act on it and see what rainbow tapestry of broken strings and hazy figures I can weave with no direction dictated by me consciously. And then maybe I can take that crazy-blanket from the loom and drape it around my shoulders and it will afford me a little comfort and courage.

I'm on a bit of a sentimental bent today, and I still have a streak of disgust for such things. I don't know why. Maybe because I've been such a dramatist and romantic all my life, and I never regarded it as very constructive. It tends to be blinding, sentimentality. I'm terribly sentimental, though, and I don't necessarily want to squash it from my spongy self entirely, but I seek a balance with it and whatever else there is, you know, there's a great many ways to see life. 

I don't like indulging in sentimentality, I guess. Seems very self-serving and not much else. It can have it's place on my shoulder with everything else, but heaven forbid it should ever become my matrix again. 

I imagine I've been reading a bit too much JD Salinger in the past few days, but I fully intend to read a deal more before this week is up. 

All the same, damn his lofty-earthy ideals. I don't want to be integrated into society, I don't want to continue cleaning the kitchen every day, I don't want to see God in every horrible person on the street or over the internet, and I repeat, I don't want to clean the kitchen. I'd like to sit in the clouds, no needs at all, perfectly free to live in my own head or observe the lives of others. But whatever, that's entirely unrealistic, and probably would be boring to boot, I, who would be everyone but myself sometimes. 

Still, I'd rather live in a monastery than whatever it is I think I'm going to have to bring myself to do in the next couple of years, college or career or whatever. Not so much career, though as some sort of way to support myself in between stepping stones in life. 

Shall I try out a new personality now? 

Yes, there is spiritual beauty in the small things in life. Serving others, taking care of oneself, paying homage to small miracles in home, the workplace, and public spaces. 

You want to know of a book that sustained me and my sanity this summer? "How to cook your life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment". 

It spoke of simple service and the beauty in it, and I needed that so bad, especially while taking care of my mother and most of the cooking for a few weeks while she was on bed rest. 

Over time, gradually, I've learned that every act of kindness, every small work is a sort of prayer, a hope that things will get better, and a way to show how much I do care for my family and friends. That is no bad life, not remarkable, but how much do I really want remark-ability? I remember when I decided to cultivate talents and abilities unrecognized by the majority of this society, and half of that choosing was because I figured I wouldn't have anything or anyone else to compete against in my forum of choosing. I'm actually highly competitive, but I'm also highly understanding, and I know that there's always someone or something better if you think in that way, and therefore, can never ever win. So I chose a place in which I figured there was no winning or losing. No better nor worse, just a pathway, a few sages of my choosing, and my own strength and will. (Which isn't much, love.)  

I spoke of mixed-media before. It's something that's growing in attraction to me, and right now I would give almost anything to write in my own handwriting on this thing, or leave my finger prints and doodles in thick paint all over the margins. Maybe that's part of my sloppiness lately, not caring whether or not if the mark I leave is "perfect", but instead looking for the beauty in everything in its wholeness, not just spliced and framed and edited by the ruler in me that was put there and dictated by other people. I'm not really particularly interested in that lately. But to fit under the wings of others, you must pare yourself down to their colors and specifications, and I guess I don't feel like my own wings are strong enough to hold and shelter me on their own. Still, I seem to pare myself down only to my own specifications. 

Hey, did you know that a small part of yourself is revealed only after you've loved another and been loved in return? It is, in a way, fascinating, and of course, remarkable beautiful.  Can you just imagine all the things we miss, though? Can you imagine all of the things all around and within us that we miss from being so frightened and blind? I read a short story today, the last in "Nine Stories", and, honestly, my favorite. Can you believe that crazy book begins and ends with a death, though? Geeze. 

As it was, the short story contained a beautiful little scene that sort of goes with what I'm speaking of, missing things that go on without your presence or observation. Also a concept that came up when I was watching the sunrise last Tuesday. Mmmmm. 

"He suddenly thrust his whole head out of the 

porthole, kept it there a few seconds, then brought it in just long enough to report, 

"Someone just dumped a whole garbage can of orange peels out the window."....

Teddy took in most of his head. "They float very nicely," he said without turning 

around. "That's interesting." 

   "Teddy. For the last time. I'm going to count three, and then I'm-" 

   "I don't mean it's interesting that they float," Teddy said. "It's interesting that I know 

about them being there. If I hadn't seen them, then I wouldn't know they were there, 

and if I didn't know they were there, I wouldn't be able to say that they even exist. 

That's a very nice, perfect example of the way--" 

   "Teddy," Mrs. McArdle interrupted, without visibly stirring under her top sheet. "Go 

find Booper for me. Where is she? I don't want her lolling around in that sun again 

today, with that bum." 

   "She's adequately covered. I made her wear her dungarees," Teddy said. "Some of 

them are starting to sink now. In a few minutes, the only place they'll still be floating 

will be inside my mind. That's quite interesting, because if you look at it a certain way, 

that's where they started floating in the first place. If I'd never been standing here at all, or if somebody'd come along and sort of chopped my head off right while I was--" ....

 Teddy lingered for a moment at the door, reflectively experimenting with the door 

handle, turning it slowly left and right. "After I go out this door, I may only exist in the 

minds of all my acquaintances," he said. "I may be an orange peel." "

(From "Teddy" in "Nine Stories" by JD Salinger)

Anyway, the last bit doesn't doesn't relate to what I've been thinking of so much, but that doesn't matter and it's an interesting lead off. 

I'm crazy, sorry. I guess part of the crazy is what's lending such appeal to multi-media. Yeah. Just slapping whatever's in my head and heart all over whatever blank space presents itself at the time. I don't really care though, I explore myself just as thoroughly as anything around me. And I suppose part of that exploration is testing some of whatever's inside on the outside, seeing if any of it can hold its weight and color with so much all around it. 

I think, with this post, I'm trying to see how far I can wander off the beginning course of things without losing anyone everyone who reads it, including myself. I'm still curious as whether or not if I can lead myself back to where I began and sew everything up tight and neatly. 

What do you think? 

What did it all feel like?

Ah, but that is an ending of no substance at all. It floats away, and that can be pretty, but I think it would be better if the ending buried itself deep in the ground rather than drifting off to ether. After all, that is what I'm attempting to do right here, whether I realized it at first or not; I am attempting to ground myself-- tie myself all over to life like a hot air balloon roped and bolted, straining from the ground.

July 21st, 2010. Wednesday. (Funny the things one doesn't remember writing.)

They call me the deer girl,
I speak with and of their
eyes, their steps delicate and
lilting.
Brown pools of soul encased within thin faces,
Nibbling at tomato plants,
A stranger's garden.
Strange encounters with wandering
animal souls.
       Summer is here,
       Where did Winter go?

The Fresh New Ending Of A Season (A series of portraits)

And the town is ours on this muffled cloudy morning,
Everything silent, so that a dog's howling is unnaturally loud,
heartbreaking and a little eerie;
A baby bird's chirping underneath a dumpster;
Earsplitting,
Sending the dog into a frenzy, so that I cannot investigate further.

The ground is damp beneath my bare feet, her paws
And we brush raindrops like jewels from long, bent dry-grass as we walk by.

There, a perfect brown aspen leaf on the sidewalk,
Raindrops collected in its hollow.

Further down, bright white flowers catch my eye
Among a lush forest of squash vines cascading over a wrought-iron fence.

Hello! The man across the street calls after my soft exclamation of wonder,
Hello! Is my answer, and we exchange how do you do's before continuing on.

(I write about walking and rain, nothing new, but never the same.)

Gardening Journal: about plants (mostly just for my future reference)

 What I planted in my silly garden this year:
Six rows Green Beans; purple and bush
Four Cucumber plants; one pickling, one sweet, and two armenians
Three beds Turnips
Five rows Beets
One row Cauliflower
One bed Dill
Three rows Bok CHoi
Two rows Bloomsdale Spinach 
Four rows Broccoli
One row Cilantro

Three rows Swiss chard

Two rows Mixed Lettuce, plus one at the end of the garden path
Nine Tomato plants, assorted
Row of Arugula and Collard Greens

What did I learn about each vegetable and the way I planted it:
Green beans need way more water than I was able to use this year, they don't do well at all if they are under-watered. They need to be planted closer together than the six inches I aimed for this year, so next time I will err to the side of four.

Cucumber hills with surrounding trench

I've decided that hills and trenches are the best way to plant Cukes, and next time I'll try to plant more plants further apart. My Sweet Cucumber produced the first, and has produced fairly steadily over the Summer, with my Pickling Cucumber in close second. I got but one Armenian Cucumber from one plant, whilst the other plant, the one at the very end of the grouping, has been growing tiny leaves and vines and flowers like crazy to no avail.
I don't like planting Turnips in beds, they're too hard to weed and thin that way. However, my friend said that if you plant them in soft, loose soil, they'll move over on their own and you can just thin as much as you want to eat at a time.
Beets, my friend, do not enjoy shade, though they enjoyed it a bit more than my poor turnips did. Also, you can never plant too many. That was what I was trying to do, plant too many as we have chickens who would happily eat any my family couldn't.
My Cauliflowers were pretty weird this year, only three came up and they're still no more than six inches high, nowhere near the size they need to be in order to come to a head. I've decided they too do not enjoy shade, and they need more water. I think next time I'll plant them in either trenches or holes.
Dill is a weed. This isn't something I learned from my own garden, however, but something I've learned from the family garden in the back yard. I don't think it's really worth planting, it's more of a weedy-annual, something to let loose in your garden to provide more harvest with less work.
Bok Choi has to be planted really early, as it will shoot up and go to seed really really fast. It was pretty good anyway, though, and I'm not opposed to planting it again.
I planted Bloomsdale Spinach way too late in the season, bad idea. It shot up even faster than the Bok Choi did, so I ended up just pulling it all up before it blew seed all over my borrowed garden plot.
Broccoli is annoying as heck to thin because you can't just yank those poor little plants out of the ground and throw them away, because, you know, you could transplant them. And it'd be a shame to disregard and waste that lovely little talent, and anyway, you could share them with your mom! Except you never do... They fared better than the Cauliflower growth-rate wise, though.
My Cilantro also went to seed amazingly fast. It's definitely something you have to keep an eye on, not really suitable for long-distance gardening. Mum says it's better planted in a pot anyway.
Swiss Chard was one of the things I really wanted to plant, specifically, the rainbow variety. However, I wasn't ever able to get ahold of seed, so I settled for a variety I found at the hardware store. It's done really well, albeit a little parched and wilted over the hottest months, so the rows a a bit stunted in places, but all in all, I really loved how well it did and I'm enjoying harvesting it.
I adore Lettuce, especially the awesome mix my mom gave me. The two rows I planted in the shade did and are doing really well, but in contrast, the lettuce I planted at the very end of my garden matured after an inexorable amount of time, looking absolutely beautiful one day, then shot up the next day I went down to my garden. So today I pulled what was left up, because I was able to harvest most of it. Also, lettuce requires a nice amount of water, but that's a given, leafy greens and all that...
I actually was going to have my sister plant my Tomatoes for me, and she did most of the holes, but she wasn't impressed with the soil, so I ended digging the rest of the wholes and planting the tomatoes. It's been interesting growing them, as I've never really had that responsibility before. I can't say I've done the best job, most of the poor things are flopped over on the ground because I didn't get around to building more cages, and I lost like three of the plants for reasons unbeknownst to me. I knocked one more over with a hose too, but it hadn't broken off completely, so I propped it up and built a mount of dirt around it for support and in the hope that it might grow more roots above the break. It was doing great for the longest time, but a month ago it started dying, drooping over and shriveling up, which it too bad because I was really excited that I might have saved it.






The Arugula and Collard Greens experiment failed, end of story. Maybe I'll tell you more later...



















That's it for everything I managed to plant, hopefully all of this will help me to figure out how to do things better next year. For one thing, I'd really like to integrate more permaculture into my gardening in the future, that was supposed to be part of the point for this Summer's whole experiment.
Things work out the way they do, though, and everything always turns out just right.

Today's haul of cucumbers

Six sweet, six pickle, the biggest harvest I've had so far. (That's the only reason I'm bothering to document these.)  

Pickling 

Sweet

The Summer Sky

Sunrise, Moonset

I woke up early this morning, about 6:30 or so, and after a bit of deliberation, I decided to throw a long sleeve shirt on and go outside to watch the sunrise and the moon set. I went out free from devices; my iPod, camera, ect. I considered taking one or the other to photograph what was taking place, but I decided to be solely an observer in the moment this morning.

The sky was mostly cloudless, just a few wispy, dusty-pink ribbons and veils towards the East, approximately where the sun was going to rise. The pink tint grew brighter and led on the deep orange, then yellow as the morning progressed. Yellow faded to gray for a time, the clouds almost blending in with the surrounding sky.
The moon, at my back, sank and dimmed as the sun's light gathered strength and intensity. I believe the two eventually met face to face, looking across from West to East, East to West, but I never actually saw and took note of that exact moment. The clouds were too low upon the mountains to really tell when the sun had fully emerged.
The grey of the clouds eventually gave way to seeping edges of streaky, roiling, waving white, as all things took on greater definition and stronger shadows. It was then that I left my spot on top of a large, particle-board coal box in the Southeastern field to grab a lawn chair and pick a spot on the North side of our home, where I could see the respective rebirth of the sun and impermanent death of the almost-full moon.
Seeping white became full, luminous white, and yellow waves travelled along the clouds directly above the mountains, framed by the treetops up the street.
The moon grew pale and paler, blending in light-gray with the sky as the clouds had during the transition from yellow to white.
Illuminated further by the rising sun, the clouds made imprints on my vision as I sat and watched, the morning cool comfortable through my clothing.

I ended up going inside before the sun had made it's full debut, but the patterns it left on the doorways and walls of our home were a quietly beautiful sight as well, and I checked on its continuous progress through windows for much of that early morning. 

Learning often takes you by surprise

Since I began school this past week, after a long (though not entirely unproductive) Summer break, I've noticed something: this year, I am able to read whole chapters and sections of my school books at one time, during one sitting. This was unheard of for me last year. I read pages, or small sections of chapters. I didn't have the attention span or motivation to read more than two pages of most books, novels being the exception of course.
I imagine this is partially because I am not holding myself to a timescale, or a certain number of subjects to be completed in that time span. School is all day now,  sometimes even during the weekends. I record all I can, and don't worry about it when I can't. This is also what I did all Summer long, and I think this has established a new, healthier, fuller relationship with my personal education.
The point is, I did not actively try to teach myself better study skills of habits, they've sneaked up on me over Summer break. I have this mindset that learning is difficult, practice is tedious, and the study and subsequent mastery of subjects is nigh until impossible. But this is not the case, learning and the integration of skills and knowledge are a natural and almost unconscious process. 

Clouds from heaven, A sprinkler line from hell (Pt. 1)

August 13th, 2011. Saturday

Summer

Dear upcoming school year,
I am not ready for you to arrive. I am not ready for
the summer to end.
And yet here I am, on my laptop, inside the house
while the sun shines outside.
I should probably try to ride my mom's bike today,
I've had permission to for awhile.
I think I'll go create some adventures before it's too
late.
This Summer's been good. I'm going to make it even
better.
Sincerely,
Amoniel

Missing Pieces (Second Draft)

It was a clear, bright day at the height of Summer. In the middle of a large, sprawling park, where tall, lush green trees grew among expanses of well-tended grass and along winding, lazy sidewalks, people sat on picnic blankets conversing, or chased dogs and children through the grass and around trees, laughter floating in a slight breeze.

            I walked, hands in pockets, sometimes along a pathway, sometimes on the grass; mostly alone with my thoughts, but sometimes watching the people talking, playing or running as I passed them by.

           

            Ahead of me, I noticed another pedestrian walking along the sidewalk, a man looking to be somewhere around twenty-five years old, strong, square shoulders swiveling this way and that as if he was searching for something. A dog, or a friend he was meeting in the park perhaps? He took long, confident strides, and wasn’t remarkable in any way save one; above his shoulders, where you would expect his head to be, there was nothing but air.

            Startled, I stopped walking.

            “Miss,” The word was obviously coming from the emptiness where his head was, in  middling depth, clear voice, “Excuse me miss, but I seem to have misplaced my body, have you seen it hereabouts?”

            Yes, he was speaking to me; that was apparent. Though he had no head, therefore no face or eyes, the usual indicators of address, he had undeniably stopped directly in front of me, and his body was arranged in my direction, shoulders straight, feet pointed towards me.

            “Um,” I spluttered. Unsure how to handle this strange situation, “You have a body, it looks to me like it’s your head that’s missing.” Well, that sounded a bit rude, I thought, and internally winced.

            “Oh. Hmm. That’s getting somewhere, at least.” Apparently that hadn’t sounded rude to him, good. “Do you have any idea what dimension you’re in, or rather, which dimension my body seems to be in?”

            I laughed nervously.

            “Welll, we call the world we move about in, with shadows and light and depth of perception the ‘Third Dimension’…”

            “Aha! But of course, that isn’t quite the name I know it by; you call it the third dimension, and this is still the planet called Gaia, or Monos, or maybe you know it by the name of Earth, right?”

            “Yeah, Earth, that’s it.”

            “Okay, so that would make it, by my reckoning… the 59^th dimension!”

            With the explanation, a fizzing noise grew louder, and with a violent pop, the man suddenly sprouted a head above his shoulders.

            “There we go,” He said, a mouth finally accompanying his words.

            He looked down at his feet, I followed his gaze, a little stunned by the sudden appearance of what should have been at the top of his body all along, and noticed that we was wearing sandals. Once again, nothing terribly peculiar about that, however, his feet ended just before where his toes should have been.

            “Well, I’m off to find the ends of my feet,” He grinned at me, his eyes sparkling, all good humor and no bewilderment at his missing toes, “Thanks for you help!”

            With a quick wave and a short leap into the air, he was gone. Disappeared, though he left behind one thing that shortly disappeared with him as well; a delighted and exhilarated laugh that lingered upon the Summer breeze for half a minute, before breaking up and skipping about, like the laugh that was said to have created fairies.

            I let out a short laugh and shrugged, “He seems to be having a good time.” And continued along the sidewalk once again, wrapped up in thinking of my strange encounter with what seemed to be an inter-dimensional traveler.