April 5, 2006 – 14:08
Consider listening to your inner voice now as you are being pulled away from the logical realms and into more intuitive spaces. You don't need to hear the words, for you already know the truth. This experience of precognition can make you feel uneasy. Practice detachment by being an observer of your own life.
*snort *
Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Like people don’t think I’m a know-it-all already. Thanks.
So … Shorty says that I never mention him. Did I mention that he hasn’t returned any of my e-mails in the last several months? Okay. Not several … but it’s not far off either. I called and left a message to ask him if he was dead. It took him two days to drag himself to the phone and return that one. He insists that he’s not dead. Hmmm …
Nope, require proof. Guess I’ll have to have a poker night and wait to see for myself. I should re-name him “Boonie” … because he always lives the farthest away from anybody else. Tsk. Let me know when you plan on getting a little apartment, my friend, there’s lots over here.
Anyway, dedicating this section to Shorty, whom I never see and therefore cannot simply be a product of my imagination. I’ve been saving a piece he wrote for publication, but if I wait for the other site to be made, he’ll never see it. So I’m putting it here. It’s a little out of season, but being in “print” is being in “print”. (Hopefully, this will transfer properly.)
So there.
“Remember This”
by Shorty
A while ago, a few years back already, during a not so freaky and even lesspleasing mid-November blizzard, I was hurriedly walking home from school in mytypical attire: torn up running shoes, blue jeans, and coat. No scarf, notoque, no gloves, no earmuffs. Jeez! I must have thought I was walking along abeach in sunny warm California instead of my neighbourhood in dreary, cold Alberta. We still get ferocious winters here, even with the global ozone disaster as it stands; a deplorable depletion rate … Nevermind. It was just one of thosedays of mine, when I felt unhappy because the romantic scene at my school in reality was far from the Utopia I wanted it to be. It was right around Remembrance Day when all this happened, but I didn't feel much like remembering anything.
I was walking homewards rather briskly because my feet were getting wetterwith each passing second and you can guess how uncomfortable cold, wet feet can be. My head was down, so as not to let any more than necessary snow fly into my unshielded eyes. Then I saw it - red, crumpled. I stopped to pick it up. A poppy. For a moment I stood there, perplexed by my thought that somewhere else at that moment, somebody, quite anonymously, was completely unaware of the bareness of their coat. Somebody had lost their poppy. I remembered the ceremony the school put on over the P.A. system. I thought, 'what a way to show your gratitude to the men and women who fought in those stupid wars.'
"That's Bill," I heard an elderly man's voice say.
"What?" was all I could react with. A bit skeptical, a bit angered, all surprised. The snow was collecting in between my soles and socks. I should have moved on.
"He died, fighting for you. Fighting for your freedoms."
"Yes," I acknowledged, "But I never asked him to."
"You couldn't have. He died in the 'Great War', 1916. The bloody war toend all wars. You're too young to know."
"They made me learn about it in school. I probably know more about itthan you, sir, and you were there."
"That's the difference between you and me, young man. You can read aboutit in books, you can see it in the movies, you can play it out in your video games, but you'll never know what it was really like. May you never have to."
"Did you desert, sir?" I haphazardly asked of the man with a row of dulling medals pinned to his chest and a poppy in his collar. My feet were going numb from the stillness of standing, or so I thought. He snorted.
"I fought proudly."
"Don't you want me to fight proudly too, sir?"
"I don't want you to fight at all," he retorted, shifting his balance inthe drift. He bent down his head and with a shaky, bony finger, he pointed atthe poppy pinned to his coat. "This is Charlie."
"He died for me too, huh?"
"Unfortunately, yes. He died right at the front, before my very eyes. Hewas shot just as we were going over the top, one of the first to fall. My bestfriend, 'Laughing Charlie' we called him because he was always the joker,keeping us in the best of spirits. After that attack, we all stopped laughing. It just became too serious. Actually, if for anybody, Charlie died for his father."
"I'm sorry." I had to be going then. I would have become a snowman if Istayed any longer.
"He was a farmboy from Saskatchewan, didn't really want to serve in thewar, but he didn't know that the officers wouldn't be any different than hisfather. His mother didn't want him to go ..."
"But he did, and he paid the price," I finished for the old man.
The old man and I parted company then; I hustled the rest of the way home.But I thought about what he said and he seemed to be just as disgusted aboutlosing his friends as I was about losing mine, though I still had a chance, andhe only had memories. Since that encounter I've picked up several lost and forgotten poppies, and now I have a box full - think of all the people they symbolize.
That's something to be disgusted at.
‘Nuff said. And yet, there are always other points of views. Yours are welcome. Don’t worry, he’ll see them.
Got a Mary Maxim catalog … am slowly going through it and drooling. This is better then Victoria’s Secret for me … VS used to be something I dreamed over too … dreamed of fitting into those clothes. But now that I can, I look through them and there’s nothing there that I would really order anymore. At the very least, anything that looks interesting to me is something that I can actually get here in town from another store … for less! Never liked shopping in catalogs anyway … not for clothes anyhow. I need to see and touch and if they pass that inspection, I need to try on and see how it looks on me … not on the Popsicle with the push-up bra wearing it in the picture.
Also taking a peek in the paper today to help Lynne find her dreams. Unfortunately, hiring a hitman for her ex(s) is not something you can generally find in the paper … and if it is, I don’t know the lingo. So, I have to try and help with a social position. Please send her thoughts of luck.
Me, I’m just hoping for a car. Looking for that too.
My quote of the day:
“Everytime you follow your dreams, wonderful realities will follow YOU!”
I wonder if that includes alternate realities … sometimes, I wonder.
Sweet Dreams!
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