Please. As if I didn’t have a enough to do on the internet. I’ve gone and joined this little social networking site:
It’s too impossible to even describe other than it has a time line of your plurk activity and the cutest little drawings of beasties ever!
Oh and it gives you a karma rating and my karma is down. Please join.
I was feeling agitated today. Not sure why but it was probably a combination of things. Anyways, night came and I was almost pacing around, trying to relax, trying to figure out where the day went wrong. I thought about a pile of maple branches that I have been stacking up all summer in the backyard and decided to burn them, if nothing else, to pass the time. I piled up the small twigs and poured gas on them and lit them up with ease. They wanted to burn. I poured myself a drink and started putting some thick, cut-up branches on the orange heap. It was really going now with four and five foot flames surging up into the air.
Night fell and Lysa and Elsie came home from shopping and the house was dark except for the backyard. It was lit up like a Broadway play. A revamp of “The Tempest”. – A huge fire burning and I was standing there, a silhouette waving a poker-stick like a staff conjuring this beast of a conflagration in the back yard. Immediatly Elsie came out. “What are you doing dad? “, taking me down about 20 notches.
“I don’t know.”, I said, “Just burning some shit, I guess.”
“Can I help?”, she asked.
“Oh yeah. Definitely.”, I said.
She began assisting with amazing focus – selecting branches and lobbing them into the flames with what seemed like a new found dexterity. She never once took her eyes off the fire – tossing in more when she saw fit. Soon, she too had her own poker-stick. I was transfixed by her instant dilligence to the mission at hand. I had the feeling that she knew why I needed to start this fire, even if I didn’t know.
“I’m getting hot.”, she said, wiping her forehead.
She walked over to the edge of the swimming pool and grabbed an inflatable mattress and dragged it back to the fireside.
She remarked about the full moon and then laid down on the mattress, staring into the fire and was very quiet.
I stood staring at the fire, then at the moon, then at her laying just a few feet away from the flames which were quite a bit less ferocious now and I began feeling tired myself. I laid parallel and behind her staring at the flames with my head propped up on my hand and bent elbow. Within a few minutes she was fast asleep.
I could hear a symphony of crickets chirping all around me. The fire was crackling and the wood smoke swirled around carrying orange embers up to an invisible pocket in the sky and in the distance, a freight train was crossing over the river.
Tim – that’s a real nice bit of writing there. I really appreciate that. I hope the Midwest is treating you well. I like that part about the freight train (well, one of many parts)We rented an apartment in a little village in Wisconsin when we moved back from Seattle – trains would come roarin’ into town every few hours. At first it was startling but we grew used to it and when we moved away we missed it. We still hear trains in Winona but nothing like those in Cochrane.
Went back to Seattle recently for a wedding. I was glad to leave 10 days later. I friggin hate that town now. That gentrified, suckarrific, hell-hole isn’t fit to stand in the shadow of the former Seattle’s dick.
That’s a bit Harsh Tim, did you visit Farley when you were here?
hahahahahaahahahhahahahahaha. Okay, you’re right. It’s fit to stand old Seattles’ dick shadow for a while longer.