The Diamond Island

My 1.2 Kohinoor Rapidograph has been giving me the most awful of times this last week. No matter how much I soaked it, the inner mechanism wouldn’t do the magic click. Jammed with dry ink. It’s the largest line in my collection, and absolutely essential at getting thick, dark lines. My 0.8 and 0.6 were a little stuck, but I eventually managed to get them to make the magic click.

But man, my 1.2 was just breaking my heart. The ink crumbs started coming out yesterday, and I was able to shake the others loose. Huge flakes, small grains, and even thick lines of ink like pencil lead came out in the wash. Then all of a sudden, clickity clickity. Oh, music to my ears.

That’s the lot. I’m ready to start inking again. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Sakura Gelly Roll pens. I’ll be using them on the Holiday Cards to excellent effect over the next few days. But they can’t handle the posterboard or thick sheets of paper I like to use, and they don’t hold the watercolors well at all.

The Incorrigible Witch lent me two of her fabulous artistic creations. I feel like Baba Yaga lent me two of her spellbooks, just for laughs. Who knows what I’ll come away with by studying them. Meditating on context and illuminations right out of the human pit of existence? Who can tell, but I’m excited.

UFO Girl, with her strange ways, tricked me into signing up for one of those privacy-invading, application overloading, social network sites. All of a sudden, life form readings from out of the past start swarming around me. A thousand stories come flooding back to me from the deep, dark depths where I had buried them long ago before I went mad.

Talk about ghosts, and digging up graves to see what’s moldering inside—after all these years. Setting free spirits imprisoned by the past?

My friend Xtine came back into my life from another galaxy, where she had been collecting intergalactic buddha samples for the delight, horror and education of the general public. Her appearance has pried loose stones from a sepulture I’d thought long buried. It’s as if the dead are dancing out of their graves and I’m in my coffin asleep, trapped, lifeless.

I believe she’s another message, another mirror, shouting at my being with the serious credibility of an angelic trumpet. Judgement Day. Awaken. The angel is blowing the horn with the announcement power of a new life, a new calling.

I try to curl over on my side, go back to sleep. But it’s no use. I mean, It’s been written in the script of my name that one day I would be called like this, I knew it. For decades. But I just didn’t get it, and now I’m starting to realize that.

The other people weren’t dead either. I only felt disconnected. The fierce passion and connection to life they’ve made me feel hasn’t gone away. It lay dormant. Now Xtine’s prying loose stones, and the light of the stars and moon are pouring in like gangbusters. I’m fooling myself if I think I can escape.

Not everything about my old friends is what I like. Some of them surprise me with what they’ve been through, the amazing adventures they’ve had. Others are the same as they ever were, maybe a little more grizzled around the edges. It’s all good. What shocks me though, is how much feeling I have for them, it overwhelms me. The light shining behind them is beyond my comprehension.

Then I start mixing in the new friends. My current life, and boy does that stir the pot. I had dreams about this. I have piles of papers with clues about it. But the day comes and you just aren’t prepared. The bodies leaping up out of the graves, the ghosts floating and flying about, that’s me. The reconnection is another message staring me in the face. People are in my life again, reminding me of the parts of me I’d forgotten. I wasn’t dead, but I haven’t exactly been alive either.

My spirit’s been traveling a long labyrinth back to myself, and now there’s a great din and a call to action. I rise up out of my coffin and push aside the stones to look around.

I’m at the haunted house, and everybody’s in the place.

I would say living in a haunted house and unable to leave counts as being “up a tree”.  The adventure clues seem to point to a need to go further than ‘spending a night in a haunted house’.  It’s almost like a mystery play, with the experience akin to spending a night in the woods to prove your readiness to become an adult.

But to go beyond the transformative journey implies something else.  I’m thinking of a role as a mediator between the two worlds.  I’m feeling there’s more to it than that.  There isn’t just the shaman or the chief who tells the tribe how to live in harmony with the supernatural.  There’s the fighter who takes decisive action, and the artist who manifests joy.

And there is the idiot who doesn’t belong anywhere.  Who roams to and fro as they please.  Many times the fool is a victim, or a stranger who is not appreciated or wanted.  The dunderhead makes mistakes and messes up despite the best of intentions.

Out of nowhere, I think of Punch.  The beak-nosed, hunchbacked, slapstick fellow from Punch and Judy shows.  I start looking up this character, and it’s as if I’m discovering a part of myself that has been sitting in an attic waiting for me.

For those not in the know, Punch is a character in a puppet show that originated (as far as is known) in Italy, took root in England and became an institution, and was very popular in the states at one time.  The show goes up and down in popularity and goes through changes according to the times.

The show consists of a puppeteer who stands inside a tall, portable, makeshift stage.  The puppeteer manipulates the puppets to tell various aspects of Punch’s story while soliciting responses from the audience.  The show is performed for both kids and adults, with the tone of the show depending on the mood of the puppeteer and the audience.

The puppeteer, called a “professor”, uses a secret technique to give Punch a distinct voice.  Punch is a violent, loathsome fellow who goes about smacking the other characters of the show on the head with a big stick.  Usually to the line of “that’s the way you do it.”  The various characters can include:

• Judy:  Punch’s wife.  Thus, the show is called “Punch and Judy”.
• The Baby:  Punch’s infant with Judy.
• The Policeman:  Tries to arrest Punch for his crimes.
• The Alligator:  Tries to eat Punch.
• Pretty Polly:  Attractive woman Punch tries to get on with.
• The Ghost:  Tries to scare Punch.
• The Doctor:  Tries to cure Punch of his ills.
• The Hangman:  Tries to hang Punch for his crimes.
• The Devil:  Tries to make Punch pay for his crimes.

The show can be quite vulgar, and it can also be goofy fun, depending on how the professor plays it.  I’ve never been one for puppets, but the whole world of Punch seems so darn interesting, it draws me in with the temptation to take it up for myself.

The slapstick (a stick that makes a slap sound when it hits someone) Punch uses to do the other characters in comes forward in my mind.  That must be the arcane stick I was seeing earlier.  There are some schools of thought that Punch is descended from a mystery play from ancient times, and that his story represents moral lessons and catharsis of an incredibly civilized kind.  So it makes sense that the Hek-mail was trying to get that across in a mystical, magical sort of way.

In a psychic sense, the slapstick must be the tool I’ll need to help the monsters.  And it might be what I need to delve into the haunted house.  Of course, it’s Mr. Punch’s slapstick and not mine, and coaxing him into letting me borrow it might prove interesting.  Well, as long as the audience gets a laugh out of it, I suppose it’s all good.

This could get real weird.

There’s a state park where the folks, K and I often go to escape the attack droids and meager-minders.  The park is a little hard to find and get to.  It’s made up of a huge forest by the river with miles of paths.  A devoted group of volunteers maintain the consciousness level there.

The place is a labyrinth, because you can spend hours in the place and hardly see anyone.  As the sun goes down, the place turns otherworldly.  There are a few paths that can lead you into really spooky, scary areas of the woods.

When K and I go, we always take a daypack with plenty of water and snacks, along with a tasty lunch.  We take a first aid kit, a universal tool, emergency raingear, and a compass.  I’ve watched people get into trouble an hour from home, and experienced the outdoors beat down myself a few times.  Hypothermia and dehydration are two hard-core realities even in the land of expanding skyscraper false idols.

I bring this up because I’d been saving the park encounters as a topic for later, but now it looks like current events are pushing this ship front and center.  It occurs to me that while my hikes in the park have been a relaxing getaway from the demands of time and space, I’ve also been living an unconscious exploration.

The latest schematic from the opened Hek-mail shows a labyrinth between two trees between two critters.  The starship crew strains my brain trying to make sense of the symbolism.  After a while, I believe I have a functioning, conscious explanation.

The two critters are guardians keeping out the unprepared, pulling the wool over their eyes for their own protection so to speak.  The labyrinth between the two trees suggests a path between trees – like the park.  At the center of which is a tree.

As a symbol, a tree can represent several things:

• A gallows.
• The cross of the crucifixion.
• An Xmas tree.

It can also be an informal reference to being “up a tree”, or treed.  I’ve been hearing the lines from a song in my head for weeks now, I’m up and down and all around, I’m up a bloody tree.  Going to have to find out the title of that song, but UFO Girl must have played it by unconscious request.

To be in a situation of confusion or embarrassment from which there is no retreat.  Yeah, that sounds like a whole lot of fun.  My experiences in the woods in that state of mind have not been safe.

Tree also has connotations of pledges, truth, and trust.  “Where one waits trustingly.”  Maybe I’m getting the external mixed up with the internal.  I haven’t seen any critters with glowing eyes or scary sharp teeth and claws, so maybe I’ve passed between them.  And the hikes have been a form of doing time in the labyrinth.

Where does the labyrinth lead?  Well, home of course.  At the end of the hike, we all get in the car and return to the struggle.

Which means the center ends up at my home, the haunted house.

Oh, great.

11-21-08 ETA: My aunt Duke says, “Trees appear on shields and are thought to symbolize antiquity and strength.  The fir tree stands for clarity, achievement and energy.  The yew – transference, passage, illusion.  And of course there is the tree of knowledge.  In Teutonic and Nordic culture there is the world tree – where the sacred enters the profane.

The other two symbols – I am going from my gut reaction to the images.  One I see as a phoenix which stands for resurrection, immortality, fire and divinity.  The other reminds me of either a river or a snake.  River according to Jung is water already in motion finding its own way through conditions of external danger to emerge intact and triumphant for union with the sea – implying the longest way around is the shortest and safest way to the sea.  Snakes were often guardians of sacred places.  The Celts believed that if you see a snake on a shamanic journey prepare to shed something in favor of something greater and better.”

Thanks for the info-pumpup, Duke.

I get back from my stupid search for the alien critter, and I receive the Mr. Megaphone treatment from UFO Girl.  She just made all that stuff up.  The big hoot was watching me blunder around in an area of high psychic radioactivity, with malfunctioning killer robots wandering around ready to smash skulls.  The excitement of wondering whether I would fall down go boom or get opened like a can of tuna was a blast for her.

She beams over the right aural frequency to open my Hek-mail, since she’s decided to be a bad sport and randomly do the left thing anyway.

There’s a long dramatic scene in my brain where the Hek-mail uncoils, shifts and turns inside over outside to reveal a burst of rainbow colors that floor my mental sight.  I feel like this has a touch of the Dark Goddess in it.

I have the experience of traveling down a long hallway of rich, dark stone.  There are torches on the walls in the shape of fishes, with weird black-yellow flames burning from their mouths.  Everywhere there are wild dogs with hollowed out eye sockets of soft blue light.  They follow me at a distance, or rest with paws outstretched in nooks and crannies on the sides of the hallway.  They might once have been people, but their energies have now been directed towards the movement of divine purposes.

The hallway ends in a wide, narrow cavern with a lake of cold, clear nectar all along the irregular floor.  The nectar lake glows with a living firefly light of golden green.  I step into the lake at the edges and my feet tingle with the cold stickiness of it.  All around me is a ghostly presence of life-giving sensation.  The cosmic wind of the galaxies is whistling through my hair.  I listen, and wait to hear the message that is coming to me from a mysterious, fantastic power.

My being here is the message, and also the thing I must do.

I leave the cavern behind, and return through the hallway to the world.  For a long while I’m surrounded by a literal darkness of incomprehension.  What was all that about?  As I come to my senses, the thought enters my mind that the monsters are coming, and I’m going to help them come into the world.  To protect them from human beings, and let them have their life too.  The Queen of Monsters has entrusted me with a spark of her strange light, and now I have to get to work.  The monsters need me.  The apparition has come, and there’s no more time to waste.

The image of an arcane stick enters my brain, and a place I have to go.  A state of mind I’d really rather take a pass on.  It appears I’m still on adventure duty.

No luck trying to unlock the sealed envelope at the base of my brain stem.  So I contemplate how the crummy CDs I mentioned earlier have turned out to be total busts.  4 CDs and not one good song for me.  I know it’s a clue, but if I got nothing out of it, then what?

Except there’s one song I remember hearing had a funky beat.  Space Woman by Charlie, which I listen to again.  This time, it stands out.

I’m a spacer woman, don’t you worry ’bout me
I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to love you

Whoa, that’s got to be from UFO Girl for sure.  Turns out the song is from 1983, and is called “Spacer Woman”.  It was a popular tune in Italian Discos.  Weird.  I wonder why UFO Girl has changed her tune, and if the lyrics are meant for me, or my Mirage.  Then again, it could be one of those “We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill” things.  I guess I’ll have to go and find out!

Then I run into She music by way of a livejournal buddy.  I get my hands on several downloadable albums of electronica music galore, and it’s all good.  Well crumbs, looks like UFO Girl is hooking me up after all with the sweet life support tunes.  I was getting worried there.  A kernel of Royal Road Guidance in the malefic.

I get the feeling that UFO Girl can help with the Hekate Headquarters mail, and that I ought to let my Mirage know of her lyrics.  I figure writing a message and leaving it downstairs in the basement will probably work, except I think my Mirage has got me under batwing surveillance now like nobody’s business, just like that boy in Karin the vampire.

That probably means UFO Girl’s got my place bugged with high tech gadgets, or heck she probably has my coordinates memorized and she can dial a direct sensor reading whenever she feels like.  Soon as I think of that, she comes out over a hidden Mr. Megaphone loudspeaker and tells me she’ll decode my Hek-mail if I’ll run an errand for her.

Sheesh, everybody wants something!

I get the feeling if I don’t my music quest will run into a long string of bad no-hits.  At the very least she’ll turn my draft cider into Skid Mark Hooch, and that stuff’s only fit for Plan 9 automatons.

My skull’s innards get a flash image of a bionic alien critter with steel coil springs for legs and a tail, a pincer for a mouth, and an appetite for bamboo shoots.  Apparently, this critter escaped the saucer again, and I have to find it before it attaches its wheel to a human being and starts manufacturing intelligent cotton balls.  The critter’s name is Nine, and while he’s been de-venomed and immunized against human stupidity, his 5715 interface has yet to be adjusted to “neutral”, thus the threat of cotton ball civilization.

Alien critters get lost on this planet all the time.

I drive over to the neighborhood she believes the critter probably landed, something about really digging the vibes there.  It’s chilly, windy, and dark, with shady characters walking around.  I walk up and down the paths, crunching leaves underfoot.  At one point I nearly twist my ankle in the dark. I have no luck finding Nine, and am forced to return to my car in defeat.

Crumbs, I’m zero for two with these weird imaginary characters.

The superstructure and stress points are all at nominal levels, the crew is happy, and the ship power is fully operational.  Even the Kittee Patrol is at full health.  At the back of my primary cell awareness, though, something is brewing and it smells like trouble.  My brain sensors have been getting a lot of random readings in the local systems.  The subconscious radio is picking up increased activity as well.

I feel guilty and out of sorts, because being a secret party pooper is no fun.  The last thing I need right now is a mood, but then perhaps I’m getting a message that I haven’t quite figured out yet.  Something heavy hangs in the air I’m breathing, as if some gigantic catastrophe were about to erupt from the depths and rip the heads off anyone who isn’t bowing low enough.

An image enters my mind of a selfish mindset as large as the world, wearing a dirty sheet over its shrunken head as it plays recklessly with forces beyond mortal command.  This psychic infection is completely disassociated from the external world, and uninterested in any internal world not based on a fearful, immature image of life.  Any moment this childish thinking will cause a disaster and take everyone it can with it.

Just what I need, a nameless dread giving me the shivers.  I tell the starship crew to hyperport me to the nearest sensor reading that matches the stats we have for the nameless dread.  I’m going to have to take a direct astral reading at point blank range to make anything of this new development.

Zap.  Switching to uncensored habitat mode.

Picking up mass mockery of decent people.  Dirty tricks being performed on valuable prophets.  Mass migration of sanity to folly with imminent beat down masked by phony baloney.  Trusted guardians bearing false seal of approval showing true colors as they maim and loot.  Increase in victim threshold rising to off the scope whir beep.  Massive buyout of worthless junk on unimaginable scale as shutdown systems of life support continue, warning, warning, fuel for fake bribery burnout at critical levels.  All systems on alert for least size resistoids at any cost must destroy.  Reality override, going eegah oh no whoop whoop, have a bite of collapsoid stone age mind spoilage eeyew brrrrrr. Doom alert, doom alert, drinking down mosquito disease cocktail made with hot sauce.  Static, static, shutdown, change channel.

Hello and welcome to the fake friend show…click.  Next channel.

Emergency transmission begins now.  Get off the planet immediately.  All bioplastoids are guaranteed a transfer station at the non-time coordinates listed on your drinking bracelet.  If you are cobalt based, you will need an extraction procedure before liftoff.  Absorb all relevant recordings for procedure at your nearest pyroclastic stability.  All other motility existences must evacuate immediately.  Transmission for non-temporal beings begins now.  Beerrrpabrpbeeprprpbeep…click.  No channel.

Random Gooberz:  “Hey, what are you doing here?”

Me:  “I live here!”

CANNED LAUGHTER

Random Gooberz:  “You’re supposed to be in scene seventy-nine.”

Me:  “I thought sixty nine was a better scene to be in.”

CANNED LAUGHTER

Random Gooberz:  “I’ve heard of choose your own adventure, but this is ridiculous.”

CANNED LAUGHTER

Me:  “Just wait until the juicy parts.”

HOLDS UP COVER OF BOOK SO AUDIENCE CAN SEE

Random Goober:  “There are no juicy parts in that one.  You bought the wrong volume, you idiot!”

Me:  “Boy is my face red.”

CANNED LAUGHTER

…click.  More channels.  Click click click.  Switching to dial mode…clack.

Finally, someone with half a brain.  Don’t stand there like you need to adjust.  All of us down here in Hekate Headquarters know your quirks.  Here’s the deal.  We need a living person to do some stuff for us down here, or there’s going to be no Charlie Brown Xmas.  Get ready, we’re going to beam you.

END TRANSMISSION OTHER

The scene here is absolutely unbelievable, average news anchor.  People coming out of the woodwork and firing shots, throwing toilet paper, shouting invectives.  Whatever they can at the 400 foot tall apparition smashing downtown wherever.  I don’t need to tell you the authorities are helpless before this monstrosity, and yet here we have a spontaneous reaction from the public, doing serious hit point damage to what must be the most colossal blunder people have ever made.

Number nine, number nine, number nine.

“Get back to where you once belonged.”

Zid.  Closing uncensored habitat mode.

Hey, I got Hek-mail.

The latest incarnation of the Halloweenie came and went, Hekate-yeah!  It looks like this last Celtic New Year was so bone-jellying, even the Incorrigible Witch was out of town on random adventure.  I can’t blame her, it’s been a year of staring at the rotten face of Medusa and kissing the gorgon’s revolting mouth on the bony lips.  I’d much rather have pizza…and margarita shooters!

My costume didn’t come together as I planned at all.  Couldn’t get all my scattered pieces whole for Goth Boy, so I had to improvise with a Melting Face attempt from Make-up Monsters.  The cotton balls didn’t stick as planned, and the bean-corn syrup-flour-water mix was more gooey than I anticipated.  I felt like my costume, my pumpkin carving, and my potluck all stunk.  My Mirage was laughing at my feeble attempts the whole time.  I’m such a noob.

One interesting thing is that the face mixture does dry after a while.  You get lots of drippy tendrils and nasty looking textures.  After two hours, the dry parts begin cracking and shrinking, forming cool textures.  Some areas crack, and ooze as wet mixture bursts forth from not-dried pockets to make new formations.  My mask tightened and during the potluck started to crumble.  I couldn’t eat very well, because my face was held in place.  A guy sitting next to me said, “You look like the lizard king.”

As Karin the vampire would say, “Having your face fall off is so embarrassing!”

I finally went to the restroom and proceeded to peel my mask off.  Then it hit me – on the end of the year I’m shedding my old green skin for the fresh, soft skin underneath.  I thought of Medusa, and how much I self-identify with the feelings her story draws out of me.  My old life turned to stone and crumbling behind me, tearing down the old house to the foundations and building something new.

My Mirage snickering behind me.  Maybe a stupid failure of a costume serves a purpose after all.

Back in the late seventies, when my folks and I arrived in the Northern Virginia-DC area, I started watching a lot of WDCA Channel 20. There was this oddball character named “Captain 20”, who presided over the afternoon-to-evening cartoons and shows of the day.

He was a vulcan kind of character in a starship uniform who did contests, displayed viewer artwork, and did various announcements in between shows. I thought he was the coolest, most offbeat character I’d seen hosting television shows yet. I could hardly imagine a neater thing than a local channel with it’s own futuristic character binding your show-watching experience together with imagination.

I got to see the King Kong cartoon, Marine Boy, Ultraman, Starblazers, weird B movies and a whole host of other shows you’d never see on television today. If the guy had been nothing more than a face for the magical, hope filled studies I performed as a young creature, he would have been a worthy soul I would fight to make a place for in my vision of the Valhalla-afterlife warm up.

My folks started watching a late night horror show on Saturday nights called Creature Feature. I joined in, because the show was playing movies that had the sort of dreams I wanted to experience. Okay, so Attack of the Mushroom People was a horrible movie, but hidden within the crumminess of such movies are realms of experience accessible only through the small budget seriousness that fails.

The sacrifice of the artist creates a void inside of which the sacrament of horror is transformed into miracles.

Back in the day, before the rulers of corporate television got the insane idea that they could make more money by having a monopoly on bad programming, local channels could get pretty inventive and interesting.

For Creature Feature, Captain 20 put on a cape and scary makeup to play Count Gore de Vol, the host of the show. In between the commercials and the movie segments he would crack bad jokes, read letters from fans and respond, talk back to the cameramen telling him to get a life, and have guest stars like Penthouse Playmates or local fans.

One such guest star I saw on the tube was a person I didn’t know at the time, but would later in life. By day she is honeysuckle, but by night she’s the Incorrigible Witch. We met each other at our mutual employer, and in a twist of fate that can only be called Twilight Zone meets Funky Town, discovered we both loved the Count.

As I stared at her photo album of her visit to the Count, I discovered I’d seen her on TV. I mean, it’s one of the more vivid memories I have of those days – her getting into the Count’s Coffin to gag jokes from the studio staff while her friend looks on in shock. Life is weird.

We both look up Count Gore, and find out he has a website. Then we find out he’d moved back to Northern Virginia! She manages to get a “date” with him and catch up on old times, since she finds out they live in the same area. This is freaking me out. I got to hand it to the Incorrigible Witch, she’s got some real brass and isn’t afraid to get into the thick of strange adventures!

The Count, as his daytime alter-ego, drops by our office and gives me a genuine autographed picture. Can you dig it? We both miss him, because he’s a ramblin’ man who strikes like a fiend in the night, but the fact that he stopped by means a whole lot to me. If as a kid, I’d known that one day I’d meet that girl on TV, and get an autographed photo from the Count, it would have made me levitate for days. Not that my folks would have minded.

All of us have the potential to be horror hosts of our own monster theater. Some of us, like the Count, are naturals who show us the way to our own individual formula for happiness. Exposure to such rare minerals at an early age leads to a healthy, productive life of beneficial insanity!

This development has my Mirage’s fungus prints all over it. Horror and scary stuff really isn’t my thing, but in the spirit of Halloween and Celtic New Year I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. I can only guess what my Mirage is cooking up, with his strange ways of doing things. Yikes, Scoob!

In the meantime, I raise a glass of cold draft cider and toast to your good health, Count! Such as it is, being undead or something. There is no other horror host like you in my pond of memories. Wolfman Jack and Ghoulardi get props from me for the ground they broke in my psyche. But it’s your weird, wonderful imagination that stands the test of time in my dark soul!

Back at the Honeycomb Hideout, Blink and Frankie were able to fend off The Invaders and keep the Krell Furnaces running on time.  We brought a shell-shocked Michael back from the kennel services.

It appears the combination of an orderly routine and over exposure to multiple ani-mani-mals cured him of his intruder-torpedo hit of neurotic behavior.  He was back in full operating condition and ready to surround the Hideout with peace love and Meow-Bombs.

While we unpacked and recovered from our vacation, I got to thinking.  Those bees probably won’t be lasting long, what six weeks?  And I would be a real jerk if I let them run down into the ground, much as I need their aggression to keep the beat down at bay while I repair and recharge my battered starship of the imagination.

What that new breed of bees needs is a home.  A place to make a nest and grow into a healthy hive of killer bees!  Okay, so they bite and sting and rip and tear.  But they work twice as hard and make twice as much honey.  They’re hardier and more dedicated than your ordinary honeybee.  I say I should give them a chance.

And the best place for a hive of killer bees is a nice secluded nook or cranny in the brain stem of the imagination, or a real world location that evokes that confluence between worlds.  I’m sure that little side room in the basement would be a perfect place for the bees.  They can get out through the ventilation system.  Isn’t that what all monsters do?

Yeah, what am I doing caring for dangerous imaginary insects right?  Well, if you ever saw that scary movie Willard (the original), about a guy who takes care of rats and trains them to kill people he doesn’t like.  Or you saw the sequel, Ben, about a boy who bonds with the rats post-Willard and gives them his help.  That’s why.  I have a soft spot for “vermin” and “pests”, because they are tough and mean.  I relate to them.

You never hear about the Queen of the killer bees, or her consorts.  But her story has got to be in there somewhere.  And her bees might be buffalo soldiers, stolen from Africa.  Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival.

It’s all about the caring and sharing.  A moment of surrender, which a lifetime of prudence can never retract.  Those bees will check out the night flowers and make the sweet, sweet honey while I hide them from the idiots on parade.

While holed up in our hidden refuge, the original doom hikers got down to the business of working out the psychological stew concocted from the last year’s gatherings.  Good grief, when I think about where I was about this time a year before, I thought it was grim then.  This time, I was more wary.  The bushwhackers are out there ready to strike, but the spirits of the forest will be happy to knock you over if you volunteer.

The consensus seems to be to shrug it off with a laugh and get prepared for next year’s fun and excitement.  That’s all right with me.  I’m ready to go dancing on the ceiling.

I’d forgotten how out of sorts and on edge being in the Haunted House had made me.  Even K is calling it that now, and is living it.  I don’t know what to make of my Mirage’s antics.  But out here in a nice, warm protected cabin away from the backwater nonsense of the ruling class who know squat about slack, I only had to deal with a spooky, otherworldly place.

Wesley Willis sings about the Chicken Cow, and that’s what we called whatever it was that was making mooing noises outside in the woods at five past one in the morning.  By day it makes noises like a chicken and is harmless, but by night it sounds like a cow and hunts for human flesh!  We kept the candles burning outside on the porch as long as we dared, then retreated to indoors and locked the doors, shutting the windows and jacking up the fire against the nameless horror of the Chicken Cow.

K really showed how much her cooking skills have improved over the last year.  She makes a hell of a loaf of bread, hamburger buns and an outstanding meatloaf.  My mom was happy to let K take the lead and do her part to keep the food supply at a good level.  K got a small loom for her birthday, and has mastered the basics.  She coughed up a wonderful little throw rug of reds and pinks during our retreat.

K also spent a lot of time helping caterpillars.  I don’t know if she was helping good ones or bad ones, but a lot of them were tomato hornworm types or white fuzzy with black antennae types.  She didn’t want to see them get squished in the road by the Chicken Cow or waste time wandering around the deck when there were juicy trees to be had.

Both my mom and K are finally free of the rat-humping doctor’s office of evil throw-up incompetence, and mindless zit-popping grease that passes for human interaction.  They’ve recovered from the abuse for the most part, and this retreat was an affirmation of that casting out of false prophets in their life.  I’m hoping they take time to build good cocoons and emerge from their fresh fly threads into beautiful Mothra awesomeness.