The days were shortenings already and she was wanting to stay up late again for reasons of bad habit – and even though it was denser and more clingy, the air seemed more able to effectively exchange evaporating thoughts for ones that lingered. There was something in the language it was laced with — particles of something from another world that could make their way to hers and find themselves able to ease through skull and any possibly resistant soft tissue inside to finally reach the kind of cells capable of conjugating meaning. From a synapse to a manifest dictation, words could then form stories. It was a sultry time she didn’t want to miss much of even though she had to be aware of and like melancholy – which she did – she could easily find value in sadness and it was all just right for napping. Orange skies make napping easy. And even though bad habit and the loud complaining of aching joints were stealing some of the profit of sleep, napping was another thief but one that could leave a good exchange if it happened to.
It might just be though that the other world was saying a thing that once permeated and processed through her, could only manifest as a language replete with meaning she could find. None the less, she was able and willing and fully immersed and enjoying a hope that it could separate herself from herself for better knowing — failure that it might be for anyone else to render — her own foreign language.
She could remember watching a movie of Picasso drawing behind a transparent easel and having no idea where he was going but watching him scribble the vision only he was aware of until it was complete. It poured out of him with no interruption or flounder as if by the hand of GOD himself — pure magic in all of its absolute and linear simplicity. He didn’t lift his hand once from the invisible canvas — not that she witnessed. And debated as his artful language might have been, it was no less a kind of miracle.
She believed that there was a thing that could be captured if one was wanting and receptive. Though it might seem that it could only be a commission from higher being, it was more likely that it was another of the things that reside in difficult margins of existence, available to all rather than given.
Ethereal beings might be the ones who know and this is the time of year that they seem more willing to be found for asking. This is a good time to find the memories of gone friends, sisters and childhood. The time for sensing the smell of newly sharpened pencils.
It might be a day like today that just before twilight she and her sister would have walked or ridden their bikes up to the school to check the window for the lists of issued classes. They could barely wait to know what friends they’d be with when school soon started or if they got the nice or mean teacher — a kind of anticipation only known in youth — like Halloween.
And thinking of pumpkins, she must think of her gone but still beloved little red-haired dog who she got cans of it for mashing with her food — the goal being to offer her the bulk that she demanded without quite so many fattening calories and it also added nutrients for saving her longer. She tried to grow it and managed to get a few but it was one of those difficult things in living that a can can simplify.
Pumpkins are fun to grow. Little red-haired doggies too. It might be time to get another little being to get under foot. Would she live long enough to see it through? Maybe ethereal beings know that too but also know it would be best if she finds out for herself. She’ll keep from asking though she would like to speak with her sister again.
“Knock, knock. Are you out there somewhere near me sissy? I’m sure you are beautiful in your ethereal being.”
The melancholy that accompanies the leaving of Summer and coming of Fall is less troubling than a broken bone so she reminds herself to fall into a nap if it presents itself and not rue its thief of time any more than Winter. Everything is fodder for a story and opportunity for something.
It is written that Jane Austen may have remained single because she feared the space marriage and motherhood would have taken from any that she wanted for writing. She was paid pittance for publishing rights while she was living and not much more otherwise but more is known of what she spoke of its benefits to her soul than to her economy of living.
“It’s still August,” she thinks, why are pumpkins already in stores? Why is everyone in such a hurry to get further along in time — it zips by as it is, why rush it?” She remembers there is money to be made and the early bird is the one that gets the worm. She continues to remember how wonderful it is to have the freedom to choose whether she should compete or be happy. It is not everyone that has that luxury and certainly not many other than landed gentry in Jane’s era. It won’t be long no matter how many years the ethereal beings know that she has before she will be one of them. It will seem like a split second upon arrival. And that’s okay, because what she has figured out is that there is wealth available to mine in every split second and wasting any of them for anything other than something good is to mock the hand that drew for Picasso.
Writing Spool 