They listen briefly

I rock! I roll!
I set hard against my anchor chain.
The duties I have constrain me.
The tides attempt to persuade me.
I wish to flee. I cannot leave.
Those who pass by need me.
Far off lands know of me. They know my name, and what I do, where I must remain.
Some cannot reach me. Others will come near but never touch me.
I plead with a simple voice, a flash of eye.
They look. They listen briefly and pass by.

The Written Word

The Written Word

The written word is a special thing, it creeps across the page like a purposeful worm in search of a final phrase. It stammers and stutters, starts and stalls, lies and reveals hidden secrets. It tells a story where none had been before. Mostly it creates. Images, mostly. But herein is its special gift; the images it creates are not its own -like a painting or sketch- but another’s! It suggests, the reader creates. But of course you knew that. It is like two beings in two differing dimensions. What one does, the other becomes. What one thinks, the other is. So it is with the written word and the reader. Upon this paper, as these words were being scrawled, a yellow and black stripped bee did come and sit upon the right hand upper corner. As I write and you read, you have seen this bee too.

In the Quantum world not much makes sense to us. The rules seem to differ, the impossible occurs. How can a cat be undead, a singular projection appear to scatter, information travel times be instant? How can events be determined by an unattached observer? Yet it seems so. Is it the written word or the reader who creates? Perhaps they are one in the same. Separate, yet they are differing dimensions of one in the same. Together the Creator doth reign.

And thus this written word has crept across this page, and in the seeking has found its final purposeful phrase. Between the ink, the paper, the light that falls upon this page, the writer and reader, letters and letters combined to make a phrase, the yellow stripped bee, the blackbird that I failed to mention, though all can separately be seen, together and more they are an entity, joined with all there is and ever could be, we begin to understand. In differing dimensions of the One in the same, together the Creator forever doth reign.

Listening to the Earth

Listening to the Earth

I stand below and listen. Two ravens catch the updraft, high near the rim of the escarpment, and skirt along it. It is magnificent. The colossal grandeur of the rock, its forms, it shapes, columns and flows; the life way up there experiencing it from that coign of vantage transports me to their perspective… and I am blown away. How do I experience God? For me it is in these moments.

~~~~Henry was a man of curious ways. I have heard of those who can smell colors. Unfathomable to most of us, but true. Henry was one of those. No, he could not smell colors nor see the invisible, but a talent beyond human perspective he did have. He was a Listener. A geologist by trade, or should I say craft, rarely did he, dig, or chip, or collect samples to learn the nature of a place; he only did these things so others could see what he already knew; he “listened” to the Earth.
~~~~Of course we all know that rocks have stories to tell. Past events displayed in how the layers of the Earth lay. The cuts of ancient rivers. The deposits laid down by them or a passing glacier. The layering of volcanic deposits. But Henry just listened. Sat calmly and listened.
~~~~Henry has taken me to places to show… to teach me the forming of a place. I am new to this study. He must point out the most obvious things to me before I see anything of worth. But of less interest to me is the rocks than his gift. I have seen him sit and listen and hear things that I cannot. We have talked about this gift. I have asked him to explain its nature. “It is explaining color to the blind”, he says. All he can tell me is that he hears the moans of the Earth. Its birth pangs. Its sighs. The winds upon it greatest heights. The waters raking its valleys. Its buried dead.
~~~~Me? I can hear the light sigh of the wind in the grasses, the rattle of falling stones, but that is about it. I must look with all my might to see a thing, and listen to wherever I am given. But my gift? It is to know Henry, and all that entails.
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Photo by Parkeharrison
Story by EraSeek

The Sower

The Sower

“A creature of clay, a thing of dust.” That is what we
are.
~~~
In the year of nineteen hundred and thirty four, when I was 20
years old, I wandered the countyside of eastern Washington, devoid
of hope or purpose. As I walked along on a lonely turn of track a
figure came into view, a man standing on a far hill above the rail
right of way and behind him a plot of paradise, green as the sea
with new wheat amongst the barren hills of scrub and a small shack
or two for his basic needs.
~~~
His name was Henry Solks and he appeared as old and barren as the
surrounding hills. I asked him how he survived in such a place and
he told me a tale that has stayed with me to this day.
~~~
Henry Solks was a Water Witch and an inventor and in his younger
days had traveled from farm to farm plying his trade of finding
well water and devising new devices for failing farmers for a
miniscule fee until he decided it was his time to become one of
them. He sectioned out a barren plot for himself as a challenge,
for he loved such things and found adventure in mere survival. One
who was close to the earth and exposed to an open sky was chaste ,
for one such could not be but an honest man -honest with himself
and honest with God- to survive.
~~~
And so it was that Henry Solks scratched at the earth and found
ways to survive and invented things to help him on his way. His
biggest challenge was water, as he had one small spring and a well
that was filled mostly with hope. Thus he saw this as his challenge
and set about a solution.
~~~
Long and hard he worked with no help but the gifts he had been
given. Like an alchemist in his den, he experimented and tried new
things until little by little small successes grew and blossomed,
and a small wisp became a cloud, and the cloud became a storm. And
so it was he had the basis of his success, but no success is
complete until perfected. When the earth is barren one must look to
the sky. When the earth rejects the seed, one must seed the
sky.
~~~
Henry took me to a shed on the backside of a hill and there, flung
wide the doors set on rusted hinges. There sat the thing of which
he was most proud. A contraption unique beyond anything I had ever
laid eyes on. He called it his “Seeder”. Of its nature I would have
difficulty in describing. A thing of fans and gears and belts but
no wings. An air machine which lifted him far above the ground to
deliver his alchemists mix to the atmosphere above his land, and
thus produce water bearing clouds over a space of several acres for
a period of half a day at a time. Henry Solks, Water Witch and
inventor, was a sower of clouds.
~~~
I stayed with Henry Solks for a week’s time and such a person I
have met never before nor since. If I were wise I never would have
left, for rare is it that you have a chance to sit at the feet of
one such as he. I returned years latter in hopes of renewing the
acquaintance, but nothing remained; neither shed nor shop, field
nor wheat. Not spring nor well, nor Henry himself or any memory of
him with the locals, nor knowledge that he had ever existed.
~~~
And so it is, my friend, that life is but a short adventure. Its
living need not be deemed great or fame producing, but its worth
depends on the unfolding of the fleeting gifts one is given. They
are gems! They are dewdrops falling from a leaf.

*****************************************************
photo by Parkeharrison
story by EraSeek

What a brave new world!

Here I am, starting a blog. My wife started one and I thought "That's cool, I want one!" From there it everything kinda fell apart. First of all hers had a determined focus. Mine..I just wanted to blog something.
1. Be focused. (I'll work on that)

So I talked to my wife and said "Honey, I have no purpose, no focus!"
She said "Dahh!?!"
"No", I said, "I mean my blog. Just what is it I'm trying to do with this?"
So I describe my inner most needs and desires to her and,.. well we won't go there, but the general idea is that she thinks I want to write a column. Well, I guess that's right. Mostly I just want to write. So this blog shall start with little or no purpose (do what you know best) and hopefully evolve into something useful. Mostly the problem is I want to do some fiction, some journaling, some philosophizing. It's like eating olives and ice cream at the same time. What I'll do first is get a little fiction out of my system, and then move along to more purposeful stuff. The next three posts will be fictionalized geocache pages that I already posted, but that are still on my mind. I want to revisit them, both physically and virtually here. I just like the feel of them and their tinge of oddness.
Hopefully this will all work out.

Edison's Light

Ok so here is my first story. Kinda funky, a little different. A lot of what I have written in here are things I have read by theoretical physicists on the "kinda out there" level of discussion, such as the mathematical trick that converts an electron into an anti-electron (positron); and the idea that all electrons might be the same electron.

Edison’s Light

~~~It seems not so long ago. I had just learned of the fact. It struck me as profound truth, not fact. That’s when I began. Tinkering at first, but mostly just thinking. But more than thinking really. Obsessing I suppose. Yes, obsessing. It was constant. A thing I could not let go. It seemed so powerful - and it was.
~~~Failures came. Failure after failure. But that was no hindrance in the least. I had expected those. What I didn’t expect was how they spurred me on. Obsessed me all the more. I lost friends, family, job, position. This didn’t bother me in the least. One would think it would. It certainly at least should.
~~~I knew where this would carry me, yet I could have cared less. In fact I craved it. It was magnetic. I was drawn like iron to a lodestone. Yes, and much the same in actual fact. Electro-magnetic entanglement. It became a founding principle in my theory of how it would all work. No, I am no scientist, no scholar. I am a professor of nothing. But I am a part of this universe and I knew where its trapdoor lay.
~~~You see it has been proven now that all electrons are the same. No, not just in properties, but they are all the same. The same electron. Thirty years ago in 2010 I had read about this idea and it struck me then. It seemed so true. But I had also read another thing which now I have at last connected, all these years latter. Electrons and anti-electrons. Particles and anti-particles. The universe should be balanced with equal numbers of each. So where are they? The Anti’s? Years ago I read of a mathematical trick that a physicist had done. It was just chalk on chalkboard mind you, but the math worked. There was nothing to give a clue that it existed in reality - whatever that is.
~~~You see if you take an electron and cause it to meet up with an anti-electron, there is a flash of energy and an annihilation of both. Or so we thought. But what these calculations said was that they were the same electron! How so? As the electron moves forward in time and space to meet what we think of as its counterpart, it makes a quantum U-turn, there is a burst of energy, and it travels backwards in time and space. Yes, anti-electrons are electrons with an opposite charge traveling backwards in space/time. It is the same electron!
~~~So, you must see how it is. The fabric of the universe is more than just two dimensional. Of course we should have seen this. The old concept of the doppelganger, only we have met the enemy and they are us! But I wish to see it for myself. And so I go on this journey, light of heart, giddy as a schoolgirl, ready and willing to meet my fate. Damn the torpedoes! I am ready! My time and place are laid out before me. I raise my rod and spread the seas of time!

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photo by Parkeharrison
story by EraSeek