Force of nature

“In physics, one of the four fundamental forces that occur in nature and affect the structure of the universe, including gravitation, electromagnetism, strong force, and weak force.” Wikipedia

The first sign that something is wrong arrived in an envelope from a good friend in England. We have been writing to each other for over ten years and as usual I was pleased to see the big envelope with foreign stamps. Inside however I found my own Christmas card sent a month prior decorated with a big question mark and yellow official sticker declaring, “Return to sender, unable to deliver.”

 “When did you move?” was written below it, “why didn’t you tell me? I thought I lost you!!!”

I did not put too much thought into that, it happens, mail gets lost all the time and then found, it is just a small glitch, like snow on August, or a rain storm in the middle of January, bizarre yes, but possible.

The next week a text message from my credit card company flickered on my iphone, “just to let you know that you failed to submit your payment this month and it is overdue, please take care of it immediately, extra fees will be taken from your next bill.”

“What bill? I went back to my pile of unpaid bills, nothing.

In the coming month the stream of returned letters increased slowly but in a steady pace now followed by Facebook entries titled “Help! Did anyone see this person?” and I couldn’t avoid the growing sense of alarm. Hesitantly I picked the phone and dialed the Postmaster in my town.

After a long wait on the line the man answered, a bit short and abrupt, after all being the master of such valuable service that connects people is not a small thing.

This was the same man who two month prior I spoke with personally explaining that I will be spending the winter months away, and following his expertise advice filled a ‘forward my mail’ form.

“Your mail?” he mused over the inquiry for awhile, “let me see,”

Ten more minutes on the empty line and he returned delivering the deadly sentence I was hoping to avoid.

“There was a mistake,” he announced nonchalantly as if it was not my life on the line, “We returned it by mistake instead of forwarding it,” not alarmed by my voice drowned in deep sighs he added “it happens, don’t take it so personally.” And when I still did not say anything still drenched in my tears he added in somewhat softer tone, “Hey, look at it as a force of nature,”

I did, you can’t fight nature or the post office, these forces are bigger than us, all you can do is bend your head and plough on.

I informed my friends and relatives who were happy to find me, and supportive of my misery, the credit card companies not so much.

The other whom we do not know

The other who hides in the shadows of our subconscious is a thrilling mystery and forever a destination on our long journey into better knowledge of ourselves and our hidden capabilities.
When it reveals itself to us through the symbolic language of the dreams do we see him?

The shadow

 

There seems to be a lot of creativity coming from the shadow if one can connect to it. 

Ghost towns and more

Always a topic that get my imagination going especially with the new prompt that we got,

"The entire town was a handyman special - a fixer upper."

I imidiatly thought of the pictures Keren brought from Kennikot, Alaska. An entire town without a soul, slowly slipping into the pages of the history books.

All by myself...

Video conferencing was a whole new experience in writing until I walked into room 156 early Thursday morning and was faced with two big screens and an empty room.

"Hello" I said firmly at to no one in particular, "anyone?" convinced by the utter quiet and my face extremely enlarged on the right screen I sat on one of the chairs and waited for something to happen. 

At 9:00 am exactly the second screen came to life with a lively picture of a teacher in front of a class, "wait!" it was a 'real' teacher speaking to few students. Almost immediately, a short elderly woman walked into the room and handed me a big remote. 

"Sorry but I have to leave to feed my horses," she said "I'll be back soon, in the meantime hold this remote and press the mute button when you want to be heard, you'll be fine," she added looking at the total confusion on my face. 

Trusted with the remote I turned back to the screen with the teacher. The screen by now split into five smaller squares each presenting a different group of people. 

"So everyone is here," the teacher said in a cheery voice as if this in of itself was a major achievement. She proceeded to go through a list of towns each I understood was represented by one of the small squares. People smiled and nodded, and so did I, being the only present representative of my city.

"Good," the teacher said as she plunged into a tenthly description of the syllabus, its structure, assignments, final tests and so on. I was trying to follow, only half way through I got this eerie feeling I get when I talk to people on the cell phone and suddenly the line drops and the only sign is sense of complete quiet on the other side. This time the signs were subtle; the only visible sign was one of the small squares turning black.

I looked around, the teacher kept talking, the students in the other squares kept listening intently and yet that feeling, something was wrong. "Hey!" I raised my hand and waved. "Can you see me?" "Hear me?" I tried for a lesser sense. Nothing, no reaction. "Hey, I am here, do you see me?" I tried again this time in a louder voice adding small jumpings, up and down, nothing.

On the screen the class went on, no one seemed to notice the void.

In desperation, I turned to the remote, zoomed in, zoomed out, raised the volume, lowered it, and pressed few random buttons, for good luck, nothing.

"Hey'" the elderly lady suddenly showed up "all is fine?"

"No one can see or hear me," I admitted to my failure.

"I am sure all is fine," she said.

"No it is not," I pleaded, "try for yourself."

And she did, after few minutes of hand waiving, some jumping, she resorted to screaming "Hey, you there!" I watched enchanted, I knew it would not work.

"Ok," she said, "something must be wrong, I will be back," and off she went.

Two minutes later both screens went black.

 

I have nothing to say to that except that I really like this picture, probably the feeling of let-go that comes from it. Lightness and flow, oh, well...ways to go.

2015 here I come

 

 

New year, new writing classes, the familiar mixed with the new. Will I learn something different, will I do some awesome writing or just repeat myself. 

A new year, all is still open, fresh, untested.