The boy

Hi, this isn’t apart of the story.

I am, as you read this, in bed, struggling with active addiction.

But it’s okay, I won’t give up. I never do.

I work on this story sometimes when my heart hurts. It’s not finished, but it is yours.

I hope you are okay.

The Boy (Precipitating Event)
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There once was a boy, who lived in a painting. He and his shadow lived there. He him called Brother Black.

And all the live long day, they would play
and play
and play.

You see, this painting was like no other, a strange nature indeed. It breathed. It sung and moved.

Hither there and hitherto.

Simply put it did not act as a painting was supposed to.

Most importantly, it grew. As the Boy did so did it, for the Boy. It expanded and provided. Trees to climb on. Good things to eat. A hammock to sleep. And against all of them shadows casted for the Boys strange friend.

You get the picture, pun intended.

Everything the Boy ever needed was there before he could even think to need it. The painting loved the Boy and his Shadow too. Its strokes provided a safety, shelter, and color in an ever expanding landscape.

You would think it prudent to ask, why and how could a painting love this Boy? How can it? Better yet, who painted it? And how does a Boy come to live in it?

Very reasonable questions. But such as they are not for you nor I to know…not yet anyway.

For everything under the heavens and earth…there is a time…and there is a place.

A more reasonable question for the moment and one I’m sure you are wondering, what did this painting look like?

Blue?
Red?
Yellow?

A forest?
A mountain?
A babbling brook?

A jungle where creatures crawl and plants grow?
A hidden hamlet by the sea?
A Sacred shrine lost to time?
A monolith of stone buried in dunes of sand crashing and cresting down upon each other?
Heaven without any of the Hell?
The things that you want…withheld
Yet so softly
Followed by the things that you need.
A bit of this…A bit of that.
Everything and anything and forever and
for always

Love.

A Love a like that of child. Before courage and tolerance and patience and the accessories neccesary of life worth living are required.

A Love that is not afraid.

The long and short of it is yes. That is what it looked like.

That said, the Boy’s heart sung the most in the wood and naturally the painting abided. You see he found a tree. There was a promising young sycamore near a stream he was especially fond. One he was sure would make for great climbing one day. Why he thought this, no one is really sure. There are many mysteries in this world, and the mind of a child will forever remain one.

But for now, through sight seeing eyes, there was nothing but a green tree, a hot day, and cool water.

There was here and there was now

And that is where he remained.

Now.
It.
Whatever “it” is.

He lived and Loved there.
All that was and will be were things for later. Now needed him.
To appreciate the sounds and the sights.
To appreciate the root and ground of being.
To humbled by it…
To be ready

We begin at the ending. I think…it’s for you to decide…

It is a beautiful starry night and skipping stones takes incredible concentration. It needs a “in the Now” kind of guy. Down by his Tree, he looked and looked for the perfect stone. He would grab them in his hand and feel their weight thoughtfully. He had a knack for knowing, and when he knew he had the right one, he knew.

One in particular, a beautiful sandstone beige, about a quarter inch thick and 2 inches long. Jagged just enough on one end for the meaty portion of his index finger to find purchase. Smooth enough on the other to rest in the crease of his palm. How perfect a stone. How beautifully painted.

Tongue between teeth, the boy furrowed his brow. His arm began to practice a circular motion. To and frow, back and forth, from front to bow around his torso. A practiced motion he has displayed on this riverbed many a time.

Out in front him of, a small ripple spreads where a dragonfly landed, this becomes his focus. 11 skips he thought. I have 11 skips in me.

Backwards…forwards…
backwards….forwards…
Backwards….forwards…
annnndddddd…release.

He saw 10 skips.

A twig snaps as the 11th was made. His attention abruptly drawn away.

A movement

A sound

A motion

A violence

A loss

A loss of something terribly important

Now. There is only ever now.

Through it. No matter how hard he tried.

There was here and there was now
and that is where he remained.

The Boy lays there…and after a while.

And that’s where are story begins…

If only we knew that the things we are doing would be the last time. Or at least the last time for a long time.

The stone settles on the riverbed. Undisturbed.

All of it (A Spiritual Experience)
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Inspired by Aestus by Shida Shahabi

Aestus

[of fire] an agitation, glow, heat, rage
[in poetry] summer
[of the sea] a heaving, swell, surge
the waves, billows, sea
irresolution, uncertainty, hesitation

He walked the path he has seen laid out before him countless times. Night is fresh and just settling in to itself. On one end of the sky, a deep black that slowly fades to a not as deep purple and further along those edges a last bit of pink as the day says goodbye.

He remembers this walk and the tall grass grazing his sides. The narrow path covered in younger footprints he had taken a 100 times before. They remembered him and he remembered them. A silly thing to be grateful for, but he still smiled a small smile all the same.

As we step towards something, the earth beneath us will give tell tell signs of if what we are stepping towards is in congruence with its Plan….for those who know how to listen.

Tonight, the crunch underneath his feet was an acknowledgement, “I know you are here. I’ve missed you. This work must be done.” And he heard it.

She always spoke to him this way. In all the ramblings of his mind, She always spoke plain. This was Her kindness to him.

His feet followed the message. His finger tracing the chain link fence to his right. Ears listening to the Cicada that drowned out his own inner voice. They pulled the thoughts from his mind and translated them to into the thoughtless sounds of the wood. Expressed and then forgotten, important but not serious, a demostration of the moment, as things should be.

A reminder if nothing else
There is here
And there is now
And that is where he remained.

The path is narrow. Roughly 3 feet wide and dips on the left side quickly into a man made creek bed. The fence on his right is actually the outline of a backyard that will eventually stop and give way to an open field with more thigh high grass.

He heads straight. Knowing the way.

The creek bends right and as he gets close a thought occurs to him. A small distraction but hopefully a beneficial one. He shuffles down the dry mud scale into the bed and starts looking around. He knew he could find it, as he had a knack for knowing.

As he aged, he learned that knack was, simply, more or less asking for help. A willingness to be humbled by not knowing and in that much was revealed. In this case, a stone.

He hears the Boy.

(Don’t know what to do here yet, skipping forward)

“I have to show you”
“How much?”
“All of it…”

Consciousness explodes
He can’t breathe
He is drowning
Small arms striking on water that does not care.
He can see the house but then the lining of the pool speckled blue and white.
It oscillates back and forth.
There is a gasp and a memory of the way water looks when it falls off your eyes
He struggled
And then he rested
He remembered the calm and the quiet
In later years, in his cups, it always reminded him of that quiet
A good man and woman (a very good man and a very good woman) breathe life back into him.

Somehow, he watches all of this perched on a ledge.

……

The cartoon movie was called “The Great Mouse Detective” and he watched it at her house.
Her name was Jordan and her Grandma was watching them
There was a bat in the movie called Fidget.
He did not like Fidget.
Walking home, he sees his Momma and Daddy together, playing basketball and they kiss
He watches them
Momma ask him to go inside and get ready for bed
So he did
A small boy finds his way into a bunk bed
What is important is not remembered
Atleast not the way it should be
A life lived forward does not have such luxuries
It took the boy a long time to make sense of that

With feet tucked in and a head full of hair, the boy looked like a plant
His jostling roots (which are actually toes) become cozy underneath the warmth of his blanket.
The safety the blankly brings surrounds him
A hand of his fell off to the side
In reality, it was a cat, that belonged to his sister, that poked at his sleepy hand
But in his mind the image of a bat came forth
And bats bites…

He moved to vertical as quickly as he could
Running his right hand across left, grateful for the digits his sleeping self almost cost him.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

If his eyes weren’t crusty he would have immediately addressed the sound, but his scrubbing stopped once he heard it

The boys window was at his ten o’clock

THUMP THUMP THUMP

As eyes began to perceive he saw two yellow eyes

Fidget. He did not like Fidget.

THUMP THUMP THUMP