From: intraphase@gmail.com

THE SHINING ROCK


I had found a level spot on the Shining Rock.
A gentle perch for a small and tired Owl: just below the
treeline, snug in the scrub pines, the winds of Joy and Rage
buffeted by the silly trees, whose entire existence, was a never
ending attempt; to do what I had accomplished in a mere
afternoon. Yet; it was just another day for a Warrior-Sorcerer,
who screamed into Totality, leaped into The Nothing, took what
was required, and returned with the same amount of effort it
might take old Mabel and Gus, and little Missy and their darling
boy Junior, to putter on out to the state park, and have a soda
pop, while staring up blissfully at Old Stone Face.
I was starting to wonder.

As the years went by, sometimes I’d think about Gus and
Mabel and little Missy and Junior. They were almost like a
Warriors party: they had each other, they would go places
together, and on a special occasion, when one of them would get
that ‘weird’ feeling; they’d load up the car, drive through the
country roads out to the State Forest, and watch as the sun set
across that Old Chisel Face.


Damn, it’s like they knew. Like they knew something that
I didn’t. It was as if Old Stone Face was their leader: but
special, a sort of forever thing; or at least almost. Sometimes
I wondered what would have happened, if I had just walked right
up to Gus and said: “Hello, I’m lost. I’ve forgotten my own name;
would you please tell me the secret of life?”
I could just imagine Gus, within the realm of all that
domestic tranquility, and marital bliss, and continuation of his
family tree, just reaching right out, with a mitt the size of a
grizzly bear, shaking my hand, and a in a well-tempered friendly
reassuring voice saying: "Kydd, sit yourself down... Take a deep
breath." Then two seconds later, after a sly wink at Mabel,
unloading a fount of wisdom rarely before witnessed in the annals
of Human history. I’m not kidding.
I used to imagine this. The pearls of wisdom Gus would give
me, in the afterthoughts that followed my Leap. Sometimes Mabel
would even whisper secret knowledge in my ear, stuff that Gus
also knew, but had to pretend he didn’t. Secret stuff about
females, that someone who was lost might need to know; if they
ever made it back.
These kind of thoughts didn’t start right after my Leap into
the Nothing, matter of fact, they only started to come on, after
that fateful night, when we had gone looking for trouble; in the
blood red maroon 72, I think it was a Plymouth.


We had ended up at Old Chisel Face: no one had been in the
parking lot, when we had arrived. We had been looking for trouble
all night and just could not find it, and ...everything was
turning out all wrong.
We were getting to our destination to fast: and yet, for
some reason, we had timed it to miss the sunset; which was
usually almost like a ritual.
Things had changed since the Shining Rock.
I had come back down below the treeline and was starting to
shake off the lightheadedness of having gone to the top of the
Mountain. Up on the highest ridge there had been a foundation for
a small house that someone had hand laid out for a Home.
It was so windy up there, that it was impossible to know if
the foundation had ever belonged to a house, like a foundation
should. Or; if it had been the pipe dream of some fool, who broke
his heart, or lost his mind, trying to raise a structure, so high
above the treeline; in the streams of the raging windswept
promontories, where the Oceans in the Sky, [] Rule All Alone []
That broken roughly crafted foundation had been enough.
It was almost as if The Wind had spared little sections of stone
at each of the Four Corners. So that whatever dodgy, courageous
imbecile, who happened to make it that far, would have at least
one sporting chance, to return to the Treeline.
A challenge: A Warriors Challenge.

[]


The Allman Brothers Band - One Way Out
https://youtu.be/Ihh_H5wHK-Q

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* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)