The green cape cottage sat high above the eastern border of community lake canal. The lake itself wasn’t very large and was used for crew by the prep school I attended. A group of wealthy alumni had about 600 meters of a canal dredged out of the swampland to make the lake a better competition venue.The canal was just barely wide enough for 2 crew shells to sit side-by-side.  The land around it was marsh and full of life.  When I attended the school the channel  was no longer used for racing.  It hadn’t been used for that for decades.  The starting stand was still there,  a small  wooden tower about 6 feet out of the marsh with smattering of  the paint that was once on it.

Walking into the town through a residential neighborhood the first time made me feel  more lost than I already felt at school. The road out of school ran through a older neighborhood that had homes that looked lower middle class. The houses were old , tight together, with worn pastel paint jobs that showed people wanted to care about their houses but gave up for lack of money. The road ran downhill into town for a mile. All down hill ,the first walk there I hadn't thought about the walk back, but again I was 14 and didn't really care. Where the road ended was a market where I had to take a right and a quick left down another road that went over the railroad track. The market had the neon signs in the window the type usually reserved for a store advertising products it really didn't have, The windows covered with chicken wire grating to prevent something , but I was never sure what. A quick left not even a block and it was open road with dirt lots and one small house next to the railroad tracks on the left. The house has been converted to a business ,although outside it was an isolated brown residential looking home with a sign above it that said “ The Line”.

`Hold your noise!' cried a terrible voice.

My anger roasting, hold my noise? "Suffer my noise", I growled without even looking around at the source.  Staring into my worn hands I catch my last tear clenching my fist around it till my hand blanches, and my arm wants to snap.

You feel the drips at first, the little warnings of pain that makes you stop and wonder where is that coming from and what's to follow. The disappointment that something, something uninvited is about to arrive and screw up everything worse. Was it the stress that brought it back or just bad luck, there was simply too much of that. There was so much bad luck that it couldn't be just luck could it? Searching always searching for the genesis of the bad things, the illness announcing itself again, the lack of financial success, and the certaintity that a large measure of it was your parents fault.  It is never overcoming the obstacles because there is always a new one being built. God hates me, with that thought the pain arrives and all that it promises, nausea, violent vomiting and gasping for breath between convulsions, feeling the vomit burn your sinus's and pleading to Jesus that it will be different next time, let it be different next time. Thoughts pray for interrupting the suffering and overwhelming despair knowing at the same time you are simply alone. There is no sharing and no comfort when the pain has awoken the fear, the big fear that praying doesn't matter at all, that all your talking to is something that isn't there and the evidence of it's existence grows dimmer every day. Wanting to be like the people that believe everything will be all right. How is that done?  Do they not think, do they not examine, don't they feels this? Here it comes. Holding back air and replacing it with the burn. I don't want to burn. Is this what it's like? I don't want to burn, is this how it is, or is it just meaningless pain, is it a warning of more to come? Some of it must be my fault and I cant even tell anyone who'd even care. I am judged again. Unable to stop the pain, to stop it, it rises and tears the body with itself. There is no acceptance and no stopping the advance. This is dying and the wish for it. The experience of a punished life. This is knowing how frail the attachment to life is by being dragged to the hateful edge, retreating, and being mercilessly dragged back again. I look over the edge every time and want to be wrong.

The small old hound

The small, old hound, tormented by children, running, dodging, exhausted and confused about the intent of the pursuers, struggled against the many with an unexpected result, bayed in the hot sun for the last time.

The next day filled with incapable grieving, unbearable grief,and special preparations and wishes, for the midsummer's dream in the night to follow.

In the of sparkling darkness, a well worn dog collar, brown, tan, cracked, and healed by many careful oil treatments, lies gently under the tree. A polished silver band attached and embedded into the leather, embossed with the name Elsinore, polished so often that the letters are no longer well defined, begins to reflect the approaching light. 

The sun relectantly creeps to the horizen after the crytal night, doing all it can to hold back the day. The maple in the old farm pastures hollow grows uncrowded, hidding in the open, surrounded by lush grass, ankle deep and soft to the bottom of each blade. Surrounding the lone tree, the meadow, rolling with subtle drumlins, sparkles with the dew at the seam of night and dawn, while the firecracker colors of the morning wildflowers prepare to burst.

The sun peeks, and the leaves move as a subtle breeze builds with the rising morning sun until the leaves begin to rustle. The rustling builds and echos lightly in the air inviting the birds to join in the moment, the insects follow with their quiet din, and the first creak of the bough calls out. With each breeze  the creak grows and the sun illuminates and warms the pair, swinging softly, the nooses tightly holding the corpses, one a day the senior of the other, the dog and an unfortunate idiot boy, senturies of the dawn.

akej

Every boat has a story, and in sailing I dream of AkeJ.  She came to me in 2005 named Siskiwit I won her in a writing contest.  Writing was something I always wanted to do but thought deep down I had no talent.  The only time I tried a life changed.  The ocean always called to me. I sailed whenever I could but I had no way to ever own my own boat.  When I saw her picture I knew she wanted to be mine.  I had looked up the name and the meaning was too heavy for me.  I knew she wanted to carry something lighter on her stern.  It might be interesting to tell who ever reads this how it happened, what I wrote and how she came to me.  But what I really want to tell whoever is listening is what she meant to me and my son.