Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Of The Sun

Somewhere, in a past so distant that the human brain cannot comprehend the matter, some tiny and insignificant organism was exposed by the tide, yet survived, for being a tidal creature, it could more handle a drier environment. It needed moisture, and when the tide returned again, it was saved from desiccation. Over millions of years, the descendants of the tiny would-be land creature grew more and more tolerant of being away from the sea, and plants were born.

The sun knew nothing of this, knowing nothing of something so tiny as the earth, so far away that its gravitational pull would capture it, but not be affected in any great way. The sun spun on  away to wherever it would be guided, the earth spun around the sun, millions and millions and millions of trips around and around. Billions of creatures lived and died, dinosaurs rose and fell, species evolved or went extinct, and finally, in a space of time so incredibly tiny, so minute as to not be noticed by anything capable of notice, I arrived, and you did, too.

Here are some photos of the nearest star, captured in a moment, the descendants of the first land plant growing around us. To me, and perhaps to you too, the Live Oaks are giants, and perhaps, to them, we are but flashes of life, brief, dangerous, yet temporary.

The morning starts cold, the sun trekking Her way towards the north now, longer days, yet not warmer, not yet. The light slashes through the darkness, feeding the trees, giving heat to the earth, brightening the sky, and I am there to see this, as I am wont to do, very early to greet the sun.

In some way, every living creature is kin to all others, to the first, to the last, to all who were and all who are, and all who will be. The sun spins, spiraling to a tune that lives inside us, too, as we make our way to wherever it is we go.

I greet the sun early, as I am wont to do. The light of the day begins like a liquid, flowing into the spaces it can, then overflowing to the rest of the earth, and into the sky. I greet you too, fellow beings, kin of the first creatures, survivors of your spins around the star nearest to us all.

Enjoy your day, of light and warmth if you have it, and if you do not, may the next spin of the earth, bring you a moment in the sun.

Take Care,

Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith

The Bent Tree

Can you see the nest?

I have eighty percent of a hectare out here at Hickory Head, and even though it’s a tiny thing, I try to do as much good, and as little harm, as I can. Twenty years ago or so, when I moved out here, the deer ate most of the young saplings in the woods, and the wild grape vines had taken over most of the back acre. I fenced it all in, introduced two dogs with some size to them, and nature gave me trees. I had to keep the wild vines cut back every year and that’s some work, but at the same time, it is trees. 

Last year, I found a downed branch that had landed on a Live Oak sapling, and bent it down to the ground. I picked the branch up but the Live Oak stayed bent, and it seemed impossible to help it. But if it died it died, and if it lived it lived, so I tried to help. I took a piece of an old water hose and tied it back kinda straight. Over the space of a few months, I kept pulling it up straighter and straighter, wondering all the while if it would recover. 

It’s been a busy year, and I haven’t had time to check on it in a few months now. So this is what I found: Not only is the Live Oak standing tall and looking good, but there was a bird’s nest in it, from this spring, likely. I knew the Cardinals had a next somewhere out in this part of the woods, but I had no idea it might be this tree. 

If you save it, they will come. 

Rescue a tree today, and for years to come, you’ll be thanked for it, in ways that you might not have ever imagined. 

Take Care,

Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Cold

Back a few years ago, we had a period of cold weather that lasted for about a month. The pond had ice on it every day, at least in the parts shaded by trees, the pipe in the pump house burst, and it was ungodly cold all the damn time.  This week, we’ve had three days of freezing weather, twenty-eight degrees as a low, and it looks like that’s it for the month of January, 2020. The gnats are back, the mosquitoes were really bad last week, and there’s grass high enough to mow in the yard right now.

The middle of last May was incredibly hot. Not just warm, but triple digit heat in the day, high humidity, and night that were unbearable without AC.

 

I woke up at four this morning, couldn’t get back to sleep, and decided to get up, and write. Since I retired, there’s been this reoccurring theme from some people that we humans have to have a schedule, and we have to have a routine, because that’s the sort of animals we are. But I haven’t one in over three months, and I’m not looking for one, either. I like the idea of getting out of bed when I can’t sleep and writing. I’m not late for a damn thing, am I?

 

If I don’t go out with the dogs they’ll U turn, and pretend they peed on the grass, and right after they eat they’ll really have to go. So I go out, in freezing weather, to make sure they pee. They’re all curled up tight and sleeping again right now. But the stars were incredible in the cold early morning darkness, and an orange crescent moon was slung low in the southern sky, barely awake. I couldn’t get a decent photo of it, I wish I had either the equipment or the knowledge for such work, but I rather hone my writing skills than learn photography this morning. The urge to write right now seems urgent.

 

Decades ago, a few years before I took the job that I would retire from, I worked as a circulation manager for the Valdosta Daily Times. One night I was riding with one of the carriers and saw the moon, a low slung crescent in the night sky, and that was all that mattered at the moment, to see the moon. It’s important to pay attention to what the moon is doing, what the moon is saying at the moment, and acknowledge that everyone on Earth who has ever lived, and had the gift of sight, has seen the same moon. It’s a commonality of humanity. It should be. We should all take time to moon gaze, and it see it as an undying memorial to our endurance. The same magic that early humans felt, long before we landed there, I feel when I look at the slightly orange crescent caught in the branches of the trees around the pond. The magic seeped into my bones as a child and never left me. I feel sorry for those people who never look up, never stop and stare, and never feel the moon.

 

The crescent will be smaller tomorrow morning. It’s waning, and soon will be a sliver, or a smile, depending on the position. There will be nights of near total darkness and the stars will shine brightly, then the moon will return, again. It matters not at all if I am here to see it, for many more people who stood and enjoyed the view are not here.

 

Yesterday, I noticed it was six in the afternoon, and not quite yet dark. The days are getting longer, and they have been since the last part of December, but only now has it become noticeable. The sun is also rising further south than before, and now, after enjoying the sunlight reflecting off the moon, I see the eastern sky begin to brighten somewhat. Out in the ocean, on some boat, someone is watching the sunrise, but I must wait awhile yet.

 

For some reason, I cannot explain to you, a memory summoned to the surface, of a young woman I knew, who liked being in relationships, but also liked cheating. Her boyfriend caught her, confronted her, and she denied it, knowing as long as he didn’t actually see her doing anything, deny, deny, deny. They were in bed having this conversation, and he held her down, handcuffed her hands behind her back, duct taped her feet together, and then tossed her into the trunk of her car. At that point, she was truly afraid he was going to kill her. He took her out in the country, went down a field road, and dumped her on the ground, and drove away. It was below freezing and no matter how loud she screamed, no one came.

An hour so later, he came back, brought her clothes with him, uncuffed and untied her, and he drove her to the police station and got out of the car, and told her he was walking home. She sat there a while, then picked him up, and they stayed together for years after that.

 

One night she told me that while she was in the field, her naked body lying on the freezing ground, and she was wondering which worst case scenario might occur and cause her untimely death, she looked up at the sky and realized the moon was new, and the stars overhead looked incredible. And for a brief moment in her life, despite the fact that truly believed she was going to die, in one fashion or another, she realized that in that one moment, she defined her ability to rise above her own mortality.

 

I had never had anyone tell me anything more perfectly beautiful in my life.

 

Take Care,

Mike

 

Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Halloween 2019 The Flood Part Four

“That man was drawn to where we were,” Ana told Paula once they returned.

“It wasn’t that he followed us; he was sent, or compelled,” Bella added.

“Michael?” Paula asked.

“No, Michael has always gone out of his way to protect us both, he always has, and he’s sworn to life his life in our defense. When our father split the family up, Michael took it hardest. It was one thing for us to be apart from one another, but it was another issue for Michael to be bereft of fulfilling his oath to us. When we were children he was like a guard dog. Michael’s dedication to us was one of the things that allowed us to draw closer together,” Ana said.

“So there is an outside force trying to keep the three of you apart?” Paula asked as she looked at the deck of cards in front of her. “And you believe your reading in the graveyard triggered some force to be sent after you?”

“Yes,” Ana said, “and the mark on the door might well be some sort of device to let those who will do us harm find the two of us. As long as we aren’t using our energy here to fight back I suspect we cannot be found. This is a very personal thing for someone. My father may now have some ally who is more in tune to the Earth than he ever was before.”

“But is he Michael’s biological father?” Paula asked. “You and Bella both refer to both sets of parents as your own. It’s hard for me to keep up with who is who, if you two are not really blood sisters.”

“It’s sometimes hard for us to sort out ourselves.” Ana replied. “We spent a lot of time in a refugee camp after the flood. All of us lived under the same roof in the same trailer.  But the reality of it is that Michael and Bella share a last name. Mine is different. There’s nothing we know for certain past that fact. We both have suspected that my father actually is the blood father of all three of us, or my mother is the blood mother of all three of us. Or both.  Our memories are the same, as if we were the same person. That’s something that is really hard to explain.”

“The University left me an email,” Ana continued, “as we suspected, there isn’t a crime they can charge us with, but they’re kicking me out of the dorm, which will cut off Dad’s overview of me. He will have to act to regain control, but as long as you allow us sanctuary here, there’s nothing he can do about it. Legally, at seventeen, he can’t force my return.”

“If he’s a part of this,” Bella said seamlessly, “he will try to extort Ana’s return in some way, and if he can coax Michael to return with him then we have to follow. But Michael has been through very much in the last for years. He may not have adapted the power yet, but that does not make our brother defenseless. Michael is known for violence.”

“Would he harm your father?” Paula asked.

“Yes,” both answered as one.

“Michael once hacked into my high school’s computer system to find one of the teachers who was trying to force her religion on me.” Ana said. “We created a police file that implicated her in a child porn ring. None of it was true, and none of the charges stuck, but the woman was suspended for well over a year. I was well on my way of ridding myself of her in a way that would not have required such dramatic action, but the point was made.”

“You think Michael might have hacked into the University’s security system to hide his mark on the door?” Paula asked.

“No,” said Bella, “that would have, I think, been over his head, and it would have eventually led back to us. I think that symbol was not from Michael. I think it has something to do with our father.”

“So, I suspect the two of you have an idea of sorts for resolution to all of this already?” Paula wondered what it might be, and wondered if she had seen only the tip of the iceberg in what might happen.

“We have to return to the site of the flood that happened in 2005. There we’ll be able to tap into some of the original energy that gave us our power. There’s something there that we have to find, and maybe something there will find us. If we go, Michael when sense that we are there,” Ana said.

“Michael will join us, and for once and for all, we three will be at ground zero of our joining. We have to return to New Orleans, to the site where we were all joined as one in the flood.”

 

End part four.

 

 

Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Snails and Puppydog Tails

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Childlike, we humans believe that the ability to destroy makes us powerful. One of the memories that have always stuck with me was one when I was in Elementary School, and I watched one of my classmates stomp a snail to death. One thing I discovered very young was that to point out there was a living creature of any sort to the other was to sign its death warrant. The human young I grew up with was at war with the world around them. As they grew older they only grew more aggressive and more cruel.

 

Sometimes, very late, between the rising of the moon and the rising of the sun, in the darkness where no stars can be seen because there is too much light, we have killed that too, I sometimes am alone and I wonder how we got here, to this point of living. I still feel like the same small child, surrounded by other children, who only want to destroy other living things.

 

The time between the rising of the moon and the rising of the sun, and forget about me calling this day or night or morning or the wee hours, I can watch human activity and wonder what other purpose does it serve other than to kill? We may claim that we cannot live without cars and trucks, but when did we ever consider those creature who are on foot, and those who fly? Cruelty could at least be noticed and railed against, but mindless indifference, the same kind you see in drivers and passengers in cars and trucks, is a cultural thing. Small mammals are in our way. They are roadkill. Deer are killed more often by cars than guns. Birds are merely large insects. Our path over the river and through the woods leaves bodies lying to rot in the sun, and we never wonder if we might have just left some animal wounded, to be finished off by the next person, who will swerve far too late.

 

If you’ve never stopped anywhere on a highway and looked under a bridge you’ll discover that there are those people who believe that the underside of a bridge is one vast dumping ground. The people who are brave enough, or stupid enough, to fish in the small creeks and streams leave their own deltas behind. Plastic bottles, diapers, snack wrappers, and all sorts of trash are left behind, to be swept into the water by rain or wind, and the next set of litterbugs will pull fish from the water that have no choice but to live in a world polluted by plastics. We do have a choice. What choice we have made is quite clear; we simply do not care.

 

 

Bridges are also those places where people dump old appliances, blown tires, and pets. Living pets and dead pets are discarded at bridges, and people also dump dead deer here, and household garbage. Out of sight is out of mind, if they had one, and no one really claims the detritus of their own lives. We have thrown it away. It is not ours anymore. Once we can no longer see the problem then the problem has to be taken up by someone else.

 

 

 

The lack of sleep plays with my mind, like a deep drug, like possession, like a second skin that needs constant tugging and pulling up, lest I trip and fall. I feel it, again, the dream I have at odd times, infrequent yet alluring. I carry a weapon on my right leg, a sitting knife it is called, because men of my tribe sit with our right leg always foot down on the floor, the knife in a sheath. It’s as cultural as spitting gum out of the window, and means as much. The knife is a heavy thing, not a throwing knife, not a hunting knife to be used on prey, no, it’s a hacking thing, for fistfights with blades. But they are heavy and unbalanced things, like men who fight with chairs or drinking mugs. It’s a tradition that is only dangerous to ourselves. You can’t carry a knife like that to war.

 

 

We wear the skins of animals, for it is cold here, and it is more important to be able to hunt than to kill other people. But as of late, there are more people to kill, the people who live downriver from us have been coming into our territory, displaced by other people downriver from them, and some suggest we move north…

 

 

It never occurs to us, them, anyone, that we all could get together and talk about what we need and why we need it, and what can be done to prevent war, for we cannot do that among ourselves. We drink hard, and we allow slights to fester, and we fight with our knives that are bad weapons, and we tell our young that the strangers from downriver of us will be our slaves if they come here, and that seems to be a much better alternative to working it out and allowing their young to live in peace.

 

 

So we go to war, the mass of us, the mob of us, on foot to raid the camp of the people we call strangers, and we walk down the river bank at dawn to surprise them, but they have come for us, too. There are many times our number, a wide band of warriors armed with shield and swords and they are stretched over the entire river, hundreds of them, maybe a thousand, and we are fewer than fifty.

 

Some run. They throw their weapons down and they are cut down as we throw our spears at them, killing our own again, because we’re like that and it defines who we are, but there are so very many of those who seek to kill us we know that we can live for just so long before the end and it is very near.

 

 

A pervious lifetime? Perhaps. Maybe just a dream, really. But does it matter if we die, or our children die, by the blade or if they die, and we die, poisoned by our own waste, and our own inability to know that life is connected by life, not by death?

 

 

Take Care,

Mike