Comfort Before Revising

Jack-Time

What Coyote Wanted

Loki, Coyote:
Those tricksters
Pull me in
They make so much
Sense -- yet a second glance
Guides me, mocks me.
Tricksters make only nonsense
And I am a ranger
Law and order
The lessons of my father
The lessons of my mother
Taught me to follow my conscience
Follow my better self
For the betterment of us all
For the best, for the rest of us.
Follow Intuition
Follow the order
Within that intuition.
Maybe that’s what
Coyote wanted,
What Loki—deep
In his Utgard/Asgard heart—
Wanted.
You know,
The right thing.

Yearning

2013 birthday shot:
a good memory.

I wish I were paddling.

Rough Draft

“People just have to throw their trash in the water, don’t they?”  Tom spoke the words aloud, though he was paddling solo out from his favorite Mendocino beach.  He used a paddle-blade to flick a paper cup half-floating atop a tangle of kelp up and into his kayak.  Tom was suited up in neoprene, geared up with mask and fins and other free diving gear, but not psyched up for the planned photographic hunt for trophy abalone that he had planned.  His mood was just off a bit, and he wasn’t sure if sharky vibes or making-the-monthly-nut worries were to blame.  Being out on the water helped, though the lack of absolute grace kept him tethered in ways he hated.

Rereading Holdstock's "Mythago Wood"

Rereading Holdstock’s Mythago Wood.
A game-changer of a novel —
1984: a very fertile time.
Archetypal and vital:
a real novel in genre form,
as my professors at Berkeley
used to say, grudgingly,
and that’s true:
a real novel.
In my personal Top 30.

Vigilance

A clay chess piece: hardly a bishop

Five examples: froggy-diver; clay visor; literary cat; clay guardian, and tartan ham.

Scenes

Somewhere in the Highlands: 2016

On the road back from the Holy Isle, Northern England: 2016.

Trying to beat the incoming tide.