The power of the opal (Nameless)

(Older than the hills, this story is.(from 11/29/10) I am one who has many head-books in her heart, none of them written down entirely, mostly condensed into short stories or poems, or nothing but ideas. This one was inspired by a dream, loosely inspired. All that was in the dream is merely mentioned in the story. More of an epilogue to the dream, really. It's been in my drafts for a while, so today I decided to touch it up a bit and just post it. Not a bad piece of flash fiction, terribly sentimental and saccharine, but I've chosen not to care too much.)

They watched the lights play out in the night sky as he held her in his arms. 
It was the end of all they had known, and what they had known was not pleasant. The pleasant times were to come in the many years ahead of them. 
    He looked down into her eyes.
    "What's the moral of this story?" He asked, his eyes searching her pale face as he tilted her chin toward the sky.
    She regarded his satin-blue eyes, and seemed to consider her reply for a short time. At last she spoke,

    "Why should there be a moral?" She questioned in turn, 

    He laughed, "Ah, I am afraid I do not know, I guess we'll just leave that to the bards, the poets, and the harpists."
    They laid down together on the dewed and singed grass. The flashing lights drew to an end as they slept against each other's shoulders. 

A few years later, after the the time of hard work and diligence in the building of their new civilization had come to an end, they took their evening walk, and 

she found a paper pasted to a stone wall. 
    "Look," She told him, indicating the paper with her outstretched finger, "Someone has written about our adventures." She gazed wonderingly at the paper, her head tilted to one side.
    "Why would someone write of us and post it in such a public place?" He wondered.
    "It is strange, Isn't it?" she said, her hair shone in the late afternoon light, "I've read the news my entire life, but I've always thought stories should be told out loud by a bard, or a poet. They give so much more life to the characters, the places and the deeds."
    The man peered closer at the paper.
    "'By Bartholemew St. James', do you suppose that's the Bartholemew St. James? That crazy old monk you used to know?"
    "It could be," She replied, also peering closer, her eyes narrowed in thought, "That's definitely the way he spelled his name." She giggled, holding her hand to her mouth.
    "It certainly merits a reading, then." 
    They both stood in front of the red-brick wall, holding hands, motionless and attentive for some time.
    Soon the sun began to set behind the mountains, causing glorious angel-pathways (as she called the beams of light that shot from the clouds) to dart out all over the darkening sky. After some time spent in silence, the two of them came to the end of the story. 
    They slowly turned and looked at each other with wonder and satisfaction on their rose and umber light-tinted faces.
    "I rather liked that moral." He said.
    "The ending was best." She agreed.

Update

New post to my Art Page, just thought I'd let you know.
http://amonielmuse.blogspot.com/p/for-to-post-art-experimentive-at-moment.html

Three SUNbeams

"A primary cause of suffering is delusion: our inability... to see things the way they truly are.... The world is in face a seamless and dynamic unity: a single living organism that is constantly undergoing change. Our minds, however, chop it up into separate, static bits and pieces, which we then try mentally and physically to manipulate. One of the mind's most dear creations is the idea of the person and, closest to home, of a very special person which each of us calls "I": a separate, enduring ego or self. In a moment, then, the seamless universe is cut in two. There is "I"--- and then there is all the rest."
John Snelling
(The substantially small, and infinitely huge. No wonder when we are separate do we feel so tiny and insignificant.) 

"The hunger of the spirit for eternity-- as fierce as a starving man's for bread-- is much less a craving to Go on living than a craving for redemption. Oh, and a protest against absurdity."
Storm Jameson 

"If logic tells you that life is a meaningless accident, don't give up on life. Give up on logic." 
Shots Milgrom 


From the "> 278th issue

There was also a fantastic essay in this issue that I loved very much, sadly, though, there isn't a link or anything online as far as I can tell.

On a longboard ride a few weeks ago

Fossilized Bell Tones

Beat this crystal and ether
Into wood and stone.

Instead of floating away,
Make it crash to the dirt

With all the jarring cacophony
It seeks to deserve

About Stream-Of-Consciousness

Every once in a while I must scratch the accumulated scales
From the inside walls of my heart and ribcage
Onto whitespace, uninhibited and free,
Let their sharp wings flutter unbound by walls and cages
Linked together by tails of the breaths taken between words. 

Colored Deep In Mind

I feel like a horrible writer. Most of what echoes voicelessly in my mind and heart is perfectly articulated by so many other people. So what use would my own unique experience, not so unique at all, be to anyone who has encountered so many other perfect prayers and poets? I cannot even write of something or someone without relating it to my own heart, and I don't know what this has to do with the previous sentences, but it makes me feel acutely self-conscious. Maybe that self-consciousness is a part of my imperfect but somewhat truthful, though terribly fractured way of putting myself in others' shoes and peering at myself through their eyes. 

But these silly, silly cries of pain, oh Seymour, do not matter because I am dramatist. The child still asks, simplemindedly and innocently, "but why should it not matter? Why shouldn't there still be something under it all?" We are all wounded I suppose, but why would that make any individuals' wounds any less important, to them or others? A wound is not healed if it is ignored because it hurts to touch. It must be examined thoroughly, prayed over, medicated and bound. 

Can you see me perusing the book-shelves of my ribcage, pulling out one tome and selecting a passage before moving on to the next book and running my finger down its pages to find the words highlighted in my own rainbow blood? But then, would I even know if you did the same in your head? 

A Zen master once said a person can not exchange even so much as a fart with another person. This is something that still puzzles me; I understand, I think, the meaning and thought-process behind this, but in my experience, in my great dream, it does not seem true. I am a sponge to life and people and beauty and nature and animals. I am a sponge in my own experience, and so, all I am is not entirely of me, or rather, it is entirely of me in relation to my life and all that entails. Oh god, I share and am shared by everything, life running through me and you and the stones on the ground. 

I read "Seymour: An Introduction", and I marvel at the flow of words and the brightness of every person, of Seymour, and the illuminator that is the narrator, Buddy Glass. Neither of them exist anywhere but in the mind of JD Salinger, but, love, they are so real, it is like they created themselves. Children of the mind, as it were... How strange, how beautiful. 

Seymour living, breathing, dead; but also a mirror, reflecting you and me and my father. But you see my quandary; why should I write so clumsily when everywhere I turn I see my own heart reflected in the minds and works of other people? It's funny, seeing this makes me feel completely inadequate, but it also awakens that deep itch to write and draw and try my very best to splash my every color every where I can. Both writer's block, a brick wall right in front of the nose; and writer's wound to cause blood to pour through the fingertips onto the page, or keyboard. 

Writing and drawing and photographing often drives this itch to distraction, because I see this light, and I feel it on my skin and across my ribs, but it does not transfer well to any page, it seems. And still, even if it did, would it still be what I saw? I am an imperfect translator. But I suppose it wouldn't be so bad, everyone sees everything differently, coloring it with their own brush. I can not make them see what I see. And I suppose that would defeat the purpose of sharing it with them, which would be to watch it under the light of their experience. The very same reason we converse with other human beings instead of sitting on the ground and talking to ourselves and the vast emptiness of personal god. 

If You Are My Friend, Chances Are The Same Applies To You

I think and say often that our baby boy is so loved, he has eight other siblings and two parents who adore him. The thing that struck me yesterday, though, is it is the same for all of us, we have a large family, and we all have ten people who love us dearly and know us so well. And that isn't even counting how much our friends and extended family care for us. God, we are so loved.

(Feeling Out This Essay Thing Still) Early Morning Discussions

Oftentimes, when I converse with my mom, we'll be discussing something, and I'll sum it up, and she'll tell me "You should write that!". I'm always a little taken aback, but I also think "hey, that subject," (whatever it is) "would be kinda fun to write about." The problem is, I never seem to get around to writing that stuff down, and by the time it occurs to me that I ought to try, I've forgotten ninety-percent of it and it's muddled besides. I can't figure out how to word and organize it, let alone write a draft of it, and the more I try to write, the more I forget.

I'm not sure I've ever managed to write the things I discuss with my mom. It's reoccurring, but I don't think I've ever really tried. It's not like I totally ignore mom and forget; I often make note and think "Yeah, I should write that. I'll have to try that out tomorrow...". But tomorrow never comes, and I never even make note of the subject or idea in my journal. 

As I write this, the idea occurs to me that the essay formula has the potential of being a problem-solving tool in that it forces you to map things out and come full circle with some sort of a solution to a dilemma. First you present the idea, or problem, sum it up and then come to a conclusion. Unfortunately, this idea is sort of muddy in my head right now, I think I've been carrying it around for a while, but this is the first time it's sort of emerged and it's still not developed. 

Now, if I could figure out how to properly explain and outline this idea, I could use it to actually write about the things I talk about with mom sometimes. I could state what I've already figured out with mom, and then extrapolate and draw them out further. I could develop my ideas in-depth, and in doing so, share them a bit with whoever feels like reading about them. 

I don't usually get around to writing the things my mom tells me I should. Since I've become aware of this, I can now figure out what to do about it, because I would like to start writing more thoroughly about anything I can think of. Perhaps what I should do is write things down when my mom and I speak of them, and then afterward, sometime during the day when I just sit down to write anyway, I can pull out those notes and use them to explain and further explore the philosophies and concepts we discuss. 

Saturday Morning