The Understudy

They had been married for such a long time and she still loved him, not with youthful ardor but with something better; with the deep warmth of her soul. She thought, "We're two and yet one. And after being together all these years I'd be terribly lost without him, as if I'd only be half of me. How does the Good Book describe it? Oh yes! 'The two shall become one.' That's us, and that's not a bad thing!" She smiled and nestled her head on his shoulder. "Everything is so wonderful," she thought, "except ... "

"Dear?" she cooed. He grunted. "Dear," she said, "I know before we met that you worked in the government for a while."  "Hmm," he replied. "And you asked me to never ask you why you left the civil service. Still, we've been married so long, surely you can tell me now."

"Well," he sighed, a long, deep sigh, "well, I didn't quit. I ... I was fired."

"What?! How could that happen? Why would anyone ever let you go?"

He sighed again. "I'm afraid if I tell you that you ... well ... you might want a divorce."

Her eyes grew wide and she stared up at him in absolute amazement. "Honey! Don't be silly! How can you even think that?  I love you! I will never, never, never, ever want a divorce! You hear me?"

He hesitated. "All right, I'll tell you. You know how information is often leaked to the press by an anonymous source?"

"Sure, honey."

"Well, part of my job description was to be one of those unnamed sources. See, if we wanted information released but it would be inappropriate or awkward to release it officially, my job was to leak it to the press. Naturally, all this had to be coordinated with my superiors. You can understand that it was vitally important to keep them in the loop."

"Of course, dear."

"Well, one time ... the last time ... the information was so big, I was so excited, that I leaked it without seeking complete prior approval from above. Huge mistake! I caused a lot of damage by not keeping my superiors in the loop. Heads rolled, and one of them, of course, was mine."

"Oh," she cried, "my poor angel! My poor, poor angel!"

"Well," he said, "that was so long ago. Still, I guess it just goes to show that the old adage is true."

She stared into his face with sympathy and love. "What adage is that, my dear?"

He smiled at her and said, "That I should loop before I leak."

She kept her word. She did not file for divorce. Instead, one day weeks later, as they strolled hand in hand beneath a gorgeous blue sky, serenaded by the chirring of cicadas, she reached up, gently kissed his cheek, and shoved him over a cliff.

At the Ascent

 It was close to twilight by the time the old man, now short of breath, reached the summit. From his vantage point he watched the leisurely advancing darkness gently blanket the surrounding countryside.

"When I was young," he thought, "oh so very young, I loved climbing hills. I was free as a bird then, without obligations. But, of course," he smiled, "my freedom was actually purchased by my elders, by their bearing obligations for me ... just as I would do in my turn with the next generation. And so the cycle goes.

"Freedom, though, it is such a word! To children it's unbridled play. To some adults it's a life free of responsibilities or repercussions; to scream but never to listen. To others it's a state of being, either guarded or crushed by society. But after all these years, after exploring all these crests and valleys, I believe I have found the true meaning of the word. Freedom isn't being unshackled from responsibilities, and it's not merely a state of existence. Freedom is a Person."

He lay down on the grass and peered up at the emerging stars. "Ah, freedom," he whispered, and closed his eyes.

Homeward

He stood there, gazing at the sky, his thoughts caught in a silent seance of dreams forever perished. It had been a long journey, a difficult journey, and he still had far to go to reach his home. "But why need I go on anyway?" he thought. "After all, you cannot lose yourself by walking away, and you cannot find yourself anywhere but where you are. And besides, maybe home is no particular place at all. Maybe home is anywhere where you have a sense of peace, where you're not forever and fully on guard. Or maybe everywhere is home; maybe it all depends on one's particular point of view at one particular point in time." He smiled, amused at his own pretentiousness. "Or maybe home is merely the place where dead dreams cease their haunting and one can hear new dreams, whispering and alive, just beyond the horizon. Still, the wind is rising and I guess I should seek some shelter." And with that, he smiled once more and continued on his journey.

A Winter Flower

She awoke from her rice paper thin sleep and fumbled for her spectacles, then carefully rose and made her way to the mirror. She stared, sighed, shook her head and spoke to her reflection. "I haven't seen so many wrinkles since the great shar-pei migration of nineteen-aught-eight." She smiled. Her husband would have liked that joke; he always appreciated her wit. But he'd been gone a long time and she just never felt like sharing her attempts at humor with anyone else. 

After her morning routine she settled in the rocking chair by the window, wrapped a blanket around her and watched the snowflakes lazily descend like white petals gently falling from a dying flower. Out there, buried beneath the snow, was her perennial garden. She stared at the few scraggly dead sticks piercing the snowdrifts. "They seem dead," she thought aloud. "Well, they are dead, they're just dead sticks now, now in winter. But, oh, how beautiful they were earlier this year! And even now the winter hasn't killed them, not really. The roots are still alive, they're just resting under the snow in the cold ground. Old blossoms are gone, but new ones are hiding in the sleeping roots, just waiting. No matter how many winters come and go the roots survive and they'll make new flowers once the winter is gone. Even in the dead of winter, when they all seem dead, the flowers live in the roots, just waiting, waiting for the spring. There are always flowers, even in the worst of winters; they're just waiting in secret, secure in the roots and waiting for the proper time to blossom." Satisfied with her rather rambling and repetitious oration, she wrapped herself more tightly in her blanket and began rocking, dreamily reminiscing about the seasons and flowers, her husband and herself. Then, smiling, she closed her eyes and slipped out of her winter and into the eternal spring.

Merry Christmas

May this Christmas and the coming year be the best ones for you yet. And, yes, I still can't get the colors to reproduce accurately. Ah well, that doesn't matter since 'tis the thought that counts ... and the thought, again, is I hope you have a most merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!

A High-Handed Horse

There's nothing to this. It's merely the result of spending some time in the company of a pencil when neither of us had much to say.

Daedalus

The old man sat down next to me on the dune. We watched in silence as the waves lapped the shore and I hoped he would not break the spell by talking. Alas, it was not to be.

"It was near here," he sighed, "that I watched my son soar too near to the sun, saw the beeswax dripping from his wings, saw him flailing as he fell ... just as I saw my nephew fall when I hurled him down the cliff in a fit of jealous rage. Perhaps helplessly seeing Icarus die this way was a sort of poetic retribution. I don't know. After all these years, does it even matter?

"But as I say, I watched Icarus spiraling down, down, down. I watched the sea waves rising. I will swear to this day they were rising -- monstrous waves surging up to grab him, to swallow him up in the sea's ravenous, pitiless maw. I cried his name. It was all I could do, even though I knew he couldn't hear me above his own shrieks. And even if I could have reached him, his added weight would have been too much for my wings: we both would have plunged into the wine-dark sea -- we both would die.

"At that time, in that horrible moment, my eyes encompassed everything even though my mind comprehended nothing. I saw in the distance a quaintly garbed plowman cutting a furrow. Closer to the shore was a shepherd who seemed to be studying the sky, but in the opposite direction from my son. Oh, and there was also a fisherman who was also oblivious, or uncaring, to the fatal drama. None of the three gave the least notice to the spectacle above them. Later, in the sleepless nights, I would recall those peasants and somehow, I can't explain how, but somehow their very presence, their common, dull activities, made my Icarus and his whole adventure seen trivial, even absurd." And the old man bowed his head and fell silent.

I waited a respectful interval before replying. "I've heard of a man, perhaps you've heard of him also. His name is something like Pieter Brueghel. A fine man, or so I've been led to believe. It's certainly not my place to speak for him, but what I've heard of him makes me think he might be one to draw a lesson from your tale. Maybe its moral, if it indeed has one, is that the pretentious inevitably gives way to the real, and the high and mighty always seem risibly transitory when confronted by the common and lowly. After all, it is the poor in spirit who possess the Kingdom and the meek who will inherit the earth."

The old man gave no reply, but after several minutes he smiled. Then, without a word, he rose and walked along the shore of the wine-dark sea until he was lost to sight.