moths and whales and spoons and songs

Blog is Moved

2008-06-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

Head over to lasercave.biz to see the new zome!

marina and the sponges of glass beach

2008-06-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, living sponges roamed the land. They went squishing through the streets of Glass Beach, a small village by the sea, searching for children. When they found them, the sponges made them cry by making the saddest sound anyone had ever heard so that they could drink their tears. It was children in particular that the sponges were after because the saddest sound anyone had ever heard occurs at a sound frequency that is outside of the hearing range of adult ears. Also, the tears of children are much more tasty than those of grown-ups.

One of the victims of the sponges was named Marina. She was a dreamer. There were people who believed she could see the future. One unparticular night – a night that had the same number of stars in the dark sky as all the other nights – a night that smelled of the same salt of the sea – a night that was tickled by the same wind of the wings of the Great Birds of the trees – Marina dreamed that someone threw a rock at her. In the dream, she ducked and the rock missed her, but by the time the rock hit the ground beside her, it had transformed into glass and it shattered on the ground sending shooting-star bits of itself in all directions.
The sponges new exactly where to find Marina because she often fed them well. They climbed the front stairs of the blue house, slipping a little on the sandy wood, and squeezed through the space between the door and the floor.
Someone passed and noticed the clumps of wet sand on the stairs, but that was all. They found marina lying in her bed, looking at the bright moon. They breathed in their abominable way through their hideous pores and the saddest sound anyone had ever heard was unleashed into Marina’s tender ears.

Marina’s tears were so hot that night that when they fell on the sand of the beach, the sand turned to glass. After Marina’s sobbing that night, the beach was full of millions of marbles winking at the moon.
The village children saw the glistening beach through their windows. They thought that they saw fairies dancing in the sand.
The village lovers saw through their windows. They thought that it was phosphorescence from the sea.
The village elders saw through their windows. They thought that the sky and its stars had finally fallen.
The bats saw the beach upside down from where they hung in the trees. They thought all the winking marbles were little fireflies, flashing their last flashes before going to sleep.
Everyone flew to the beach.

The commotion of this thunderous gathering caused vibrations in the earth and air that moved towards the sea. When these vibrations arrived at the island of the Great Birds of the sea, they flapped their great wings making a sweet and salty wind blow towards the shore. This warm and mighty breath of the great wings pushed the waves of the sea, and the waves grew and picked up speed.

When they got to the beach the children, the lovers, the elders, and the bats each chose a marble of the sparkling multitudes. Each looked deeply at the treasure in his or her hand. Looked at the bubble that contained a star. Looked at the galaxy inside the star inside the young and still warm globe of glass. And, interrupting these simultaneous reveries, the tidal wave came and the sea devoured every last one of the star-gazers. Including the bats.

Marina watched from her window, as the children, the lovers, the elders, and the bats disappeared into the sea. It lasted two instants. In the first, the mouth of the sea opened as wide as possible and inhaled in silence. In the second, there was only dark and wet noise. And the sea returned to its easeful yawning. Drops of salty sweet water lightly sprayed the window. The sponges also saw, from their perches on the sill beside Marina, dry with immense thirst.

After the tidal wave, the Glass Beach village was populated by Marina, the sponges and lonely youths. There were no children laughing, no lovers with loudly beating hearts, no elders sharing the old stories, and no bats to eat the mosquitoes. At first, everything was silent. Then, the village was plagued with mosquitoes hungry for the blood of humans, next came the herds of spiders, hungry for mosquitoes. Eventually the spider webs consumed the entire village. They didn’t leave a single survivor.

One day many many many years later, a little girl with a mind full of magic, walked along a shore many many many miles from Glass Beach. She found, in the sand, among the sea-dull stones and broken shells, a marble. She picked it up and looked at the universe inside, clouded by time, but filled with wonder.

just a taste of the being little/being big zine (available at together gallery May 29)

2008-05-14T14:03:00.001-07:00

you never looked like a rope
dropped
taunting me
from above.

you looked like you
but only so
before I met
face to face
my fear of heights

a page turned; we were

wonder world

2008-05-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

one:
At the beach I sit and wait for something.
I sit on a chair that is so low that I can feel the sand easing itself around to accommodate the space that I take up.
I sit and look at the ocean and then I go into the ocean.
I never know what to do with myself once I’m in the water.
I dive through some waves.
I float.
Sometimes I try to find the right way to be in the water, to trick my body into thinking it’s a substance like air.
It is a thick version of air, I tell my body.
It is cool thick air.
Waves are wet wind, I insist.
My body is never convinced, and something comes. The feeling comes, invited or not.
And I go back towards the shore into being in just air.

two:
I get tumbled, which is something that hasn’t happened since I was younger and smaller and less aware of the ocean’s behavior.
I saw the big white wave and realized that I would be tumbled and I let myself be tumbled like a pebble in the big white wave.
I didn’t open my eyes, but I wish I had. There was no space or time for anything like that – but wouldn’t it be a sight!
That timeless anti-gravity chamber that the ocean held me in, forcing me down which I eventually found out was up.
It tricked me into believing that up and down were switched – the compasses spinning in their cases!
I lived in dark sound for countless eternal moments.

And then, the sand at my feet, the water’s surface at my waist and the shore, the horizon, the sky.
And the world is back because I am back.
And the world was there, complete and tame the whole time.
And, also there, was the wide existence of things in it that continue relentlessly without me there to activate any of it with my consciousness.

How comforting and sad to realize the tumble is over.

three:
I get tumbled. And this is a rough one. This is God's wet hands pushing and pulling. My face and shoulder scrape hard and surprising against what I expect to be the surface, a place for breathing. That sandy ocean floor didn't feel anything like concrete when I was walking out into the then harmless water. It is a joke what a sloshing hollow mouth moth this mass has metamorphed into.
This tumble is a real punishment, I start to believe (still not allowed by the white water to rise for breath). I'm being taught some sort of heartless lesson. Smacked brusquely by an elder sibling and told it will do me good--toughen me up.
Only this isn't just any superior -- this is the elder -- the toxic air in my chest begins its stinging pounding. This is the It and perhaps even the All. The biggest big. The constant and terrifying rattle, the pervasive frequency we only hear when the refrigerator stops its infernal buzzing.
My hand, which I don't realize is grasping for anything until -- finds itself full of meaningless sand, and then, in the next instant, emptied by the slippery thug, Ocean. There is something greensalty in my mouth. I am the nonsound blasting of the underworld. I am disintegrating into vibrating layers of drifted seafloor. The wave is subsiding, quieting, but I am still held within it. It is beginning to be warm and simple in its destruction of me. Little me in big it. "I will," I say to it, "breath in your velvet salt air." If it comes to that. But it never does, and so, it obediently doesn't.
I am, predictably, blasted by my promise out of the wet dream and into the dry one. Up and out, I am spat. Past and present. Born and gasping.

four:
I am in you again, tumbled and thrashed in your furious lather. Reminded that humans are no longer aquatic, but still hanging on, with hairy white ape-knuckles to our genetic heritage.
You are forcing water up my nose and it hurts like hell. I didn't agree to this. I did not submit to your salty velvet air. Not yet. I refuse to breathe you in, but you break and enter, my nowhere head throbbing with the thick salty froth you've forced into my blow hole nostrils. I'm no whale. I can't find shit with my wildly howling sonar.
I'm just little and you're just big and you are swallowing me wetly in your cold blue mouth. I wait for your will to quiet, to spare me, floatingly, until next time. By then I'll grow gills.

frog

2008-01-25T08:26:00.000-08:00

frog
Consuelo and Delia sit on the floor in Delia's drafty bedroom in the big green country house near the river that looked like a dollhouse. Consuelo is Indian-style and Delia is crouches. They have been creating a universe on the wood floor, using the hundreds of miniature animals and people and trees and fences and buildings that Delia keeps in a big, rusty three-flavor popcorn tin. It's a game that no one really invented, they just started playing it one day. It’s called Animal Town. Consuelo stays interested for about five minutes, while Delia becomes more deeply absorbed with each of her precise decisions about where each piece belongs. Consuelo is holding Polly Pocket by the head, deciding whether or not to stand her near the magical well (a round mirror from the basement), and not really caring about it; Delia is patiently lining up a family of tiny plastic geese in front of a disproportionately large, and inconsistently urban replica of Oscar the Grouch's stoop when the girls hear something small and wet plopping in the hall towards the doorway of the room.
A frog visitor -- Delia watches intently as it enters her space. Consuelo, not as comfortable with animals of this size and sliminess, inches away as the frog inches towards her. Her blonde curls tremble, and Delia thinks of Goldilocks which pulls a giggle out from inside of her. Her friend is too terrified to notice.
Delia notices first that the frog is injured. The smooth skin on his back is punctured and bleeding and there is another wound on his leg. His flopping movement is lop-sided and weak. When Consuelo sees the blood she whimpers a little. Delia, brave as any magician, stares into the frog's helpless eyes. She wants so badly to cure him, to relieve the pain he must be feeling. Animal Town slips out of importance, and the living creature's pain becomes all she can think of. She starts to feel a gathering of prickly something welling up behind her eyes, it makes her feel a little dizzy, a little bit like she has to sneeze, as if her head were filled with thick, sticky spider-webs. The frog stops flopping inches from where Delia is sitting on her haunches. She stares down at the animal and begins to let the imaginary spider-webs stream out of her eyes and into the frog's. His swollen eyes begin to grow milky, hypnotized.
"Is he dead?" Consuelo peeps, hopefully. Then, noticing Delia's curious behavior, "What are you doing?"
Her friend's voice disrupts Delia, who had been concentrating on guiding the spider-webs to the frog's torn flesh. The webs hang loose for a moment, then dissolve; the ones in her head sink away, thinning and disappearing. She keeps looking at the frog, trying to maintain some sort of connection, and answers Consuelo.
"No. He's hurt." She finds herself insisting, convincing. She is intent on curing the frog visitor, and frustrated at her friend’s squeamishness.
The girls hear Delia's mom coming up the old wooden stairs and wait for her to appear in the doorway. Neither knows what she'll do when she sees the frog, but Delia suspects she won't want it in the house. She thinks for a moment about how to protect the creature from her mom, Considers throwing herself onto the floor between her mother and the amphibian, protecting the creature from the large human's wrath by heroically receiving it herself, but this seems too cartoonish a solution for this real situation.
The grown-up sighs, looking down at the scene in her daughter's room. The frog, the girls, Animal Town.
"Woodstock must have brought this little guy in." The dash of irritation in her mom's voice alerts her to the pending threat she poses to this little frog’s life.
Woodstock is the pink-blonde cat that Delia and Celeste found in the street in Woodstock while on a day-trip to a monastery near there. Skin and bones, he clearly didn't have a home, and so, when Delia saw the gleaming plea in the large dark eyes of the cat, her mother saw the gleaming plea in the large dark eyes of her daughter. There was no leaving him behind. He feeds himself during the week, hunting mice, moles, voles, bats, snakes, and frogs. He has been known to bring half-dead animals like this one into the house, showing off his prey like a trophy the whole family should be proud of.
Delia's mom kneels down to get a closer look.
"Oooo, he's a little bloody, huh?" She goes to the bathroom and comes out with a big wad of toilet paper. Delia makes a sound of protest, feeling glued to the floor, and her mom, already crouching with the frog again, looks up at her and lies because this is what grown-ups commonly do to five-year-olds: "I'll just put him outside and he'll find his way home to his mom and she'll make him better. She’ll kiss his boo boos with her frog lips."
Delia only half-believes her mother and her stomach tightens with vague fear for the frog's fate. Consuelo exhales, flying her relief like a victory flag, wanting all of Delia’s attention for herself now that the frog no longer monopolized it. Gently, because Delia is watching intently, Celeste picks up the frog into the white blob of toilet paper.

being little, being big

2008-01-15T13:43:00.000-08:00

There was once a little girl who loved horses. She traveled the world, searching for her favorite horse. She admired beautifully bejeweled horses with light fur and dark manes, wearing leis of marigolds;

strong, dark, honest horses garlanded with white beads and bones;

divine horses;

miniature horses;

farm horses;

city horses;

show horses;

a winged horse at a circus;

even sea horses!

She loved every horse she met, but she continued seeking her favorite horse.

Her parents sent her, one summer, to Hawaii to visit with her aunt. Their plan at the time was for their daughter to learn to accept peace from her aunty's spiritual way of life, but the young girl thought they were just trying to get some time to themselves. She obligingly went, dreaming of horses during the long flight to the distant volcano in the sea.

When she arrived, her old, wise aunty took one look at her and said, "You are a seeker."

The girl, a little surprised at her aunt's accuracy, replied, "Yes... what should I do? Where should I go? Where will I find that which I seek?"

Her old aunt shook her head, smiling, and turned back to the pot of boiling something she was stirring over the fire. "Child, you need not travel to find what you seek."

The girl frowned, wondering what her aunt could mean by that. Wasn't the path of the seeker a journey to the destination? She looked at her aunt. Perhaps the old woman was losing her mind -- her parents must have sent her to take care of her confused aunty.

The next day, the girl woke up, and not knowing what to do with herself, decided to wander around the volcanic island, to see if she could find any horses. She went to her aunt, who was sitting quietly, staring at the sea.

"Aunty, I am going now, I'll be back sometime soon."

Her old aunt squinted her green eyes slightly, but made no response beyond that.

"Goodbye, Aunty!" And with that, she packed some bananas for snacking and was off.

The girl walked down the hill.

She walked along the hot, dry coast, over crumbly black lava rock.

She jumped in the crystal ocean and meditated with wise sea turtles and played with friendly dolphins.

She walked through forests of coffee trees, smelling their sweet, syrupy breath.

She walked up another hill, through bright green farmland, dotted with cows and goats and sheep.

She walked through rainbow-colored gardens of towering dinosaur flowers; through jungle so thick it was as dark as the cave of night.

She soon found herself approaching a precipice that seemed like the edge of the world. All she could see beyond the edge was sky floating softly above ocean. As she neared the edge, she discovered it was a cliff and there was a path that led down the steep face into a misty, green valley. An adventurous seeker at heart, in love with the unknown, the girl started down the path.

Right away, the air felt cooler as she descended into the valley, then the temperature grew mild until she no longer felt the air at all, but felt, instead, as though it melted right into her skin, and her skin melted right into it. It was remarkably unnoticeable!

She continued her decent until she reached a completely silent cluster of towering palm trees. She stopped, and looked up at the fronds high above her, and felt herself shrink to the size of an ant. She heard a rustling beside the path and looked up to see the largest horse she had ever seen. It was clearly wild, as she could tell from its unkept mane, long eyelashes, and bold, expressive eyes. She wondered how close she could get to it, wondered if she could pet it, felt magnetically drawn to it.

Before she moved a muscle, she heard the soft, even voice of the horse inside herself, "You may approach me, but please do so with respect. And do not touch me, for I do not trust you yet."

Amazed that this horse had communicated to her, the girl stepped softly towards it. As she neared the giant horse, there was a strange sensation of shrinking and growing, and by the time she was close enough to feel the horse's warm breath on her skin, she stood at eye-level with the glowing creature.

The girl, overwhelmed by this magical experience, could not find words, but felt her heart beating and listened to it. She closed her eyes and listened very closely to this primal rhythm of her beating heart, the first sense of self she had ever experienced, floating in her mother's womb.

When she opened her eyes, she was staring at a girl, who was standing in a silent cluster of palm trees staring back at her. A moment passed before she realized that this girl was her -- it was as though she was staring at herself in a mirror. Then, she watched as the girl in the "mirror" brushed a stray hair from her forehead, while she, herself, remained still!

The girl herself became fearful, and started shifting her weight from foot to foot...to foot to foot? She looked down and realized she had, instead of two human legs, four dark hairy legs and four... hooves! Her consciousness had somehow left her own body and entered that of the wild horse! She took a deep breath and thought about how to get back into her own body. She remembered that the journey of her consciousness had taken place in the moments of listening deeply to her own heart beating. So, she closed her eyes and listened for the familiar rhythm. Sure enough, she found the sound. Only this time, it was the beating of the horse's big, steady heart. The beating grew louder as the beating of other hearts joined, then the softer rhythm of the insects' wings joined, then she perceived the even more subtle pulse of the plants' coursing energy, and then, very faintly, the low vibration of the Earth itself joined the chorus of the sounds of life. The girl slowly opened her eyes and found herself staring into the bold eyes of the horse once again.

The horse's voice spoke inside the girl again: "I am your favorite horse, as every horse is your favorite horse, as every being is your favorite being, as this life is your favorite life." The girl felt the nature of her journey shift. She walked slowly to the shoreline beyond the cluster of palm trees and watched everything and listened to every sound and felt the endless journey of every moment.

the bubble alphabet

2007-12-16T14:25:00.000-08:00

"a" is for allspice
"b" is for bubble (or breast or belly or berry or balloon or bread or bud or blimp)
"c" is for cell (or cloud)
"d" is for dew
"e" is for egg
"f" is for fig (or fart or foam)
"g" is for globe (or grape or gum)
"h" is for hole (or hum)
"i" is for __________
"j" is for jellyfish
"k" is for ___________
"l" is for light(bulb)
"m" is for mouth (or moon or mellon)
"n" is for nipple
"o" is for oh!
"p" is for pea (or pillow or pearl)
"q" is for queen anne's lace flower
"r" is for rain
"s" is for sound (or stars or seed or sand or soap)
"t" is for time (or tomato)
"u" is for universe
"v" is for voice (or vapor or volcano)
"w" is for water (or wind or wart)
"x" is for __________
"y" is for yodel
"z" is for zero (or zeppelin)

the most recent in the series of stories for big kids and little kids

2007-10-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

GRANDMA JUNE’S BLACKBERRY BRAMBLE
by Polly Bresnick

June’s family gathered at the old farm house where her grandmother had lived her whole long life. June felt sad that her grandma wasn't there to go blackberry picking with her. She decided it would make her feel better if she went out into the big blackberry bramble at the edge of the yard to pick some berries by herself. Besides, she was sick of being inside with all those chattering grown-ups in the house who smelled like too much perfume.
(page break)

June’s grandmother had always taken her deep into the bramble for the big summer berries, teaching her to always pick only the ripest berries and to never break the plant’s branches or trample it’s roots – this way, the plant would produce more and more berries throughout the summers to come. June picked and picked and picked and picked, going deeper and deeper into the bramble until before too long, she disappeared into the thick tangle of bushes and lost her sense of time in the cool, tart taste of each blackberry. It was midsummer, and the berries were everywhere, dozens of them on every thorny branch.
(page break)

As it started to grow dark, June heard her mother calling her back inside. She didn’t want to stop picking and eating, but she knew she had to go in or her mother would worry. As she made her way quickly through the bramble, a thorn snagged on the hem of her dress.
"Hurry, June!" her mother called. "Dinner’s on the table, and we’re all waiting for you."
June tugged at her dress and pulled it free. The piece of her hem that was caught ripped off and dangled from the prickly branch.
(page break)

The following summer when June’s family visited the big old farm house, June went back to the bramble and picked lots and lots of blackberries. She stuffed herself with berries until she felt sugar-woozy from the dark berry juice that filled her belly and made her brain feel all buzzy. When June couldn’t eat another berry, she began to head toward the edge of the bramble. As she carefully made her way through the scratchy berry branches, some thorns caught on her straw hat—and snatched it right off her head! When June turned around to look, her hat was bobbing on a branch, held tightly by the thorns. Too tired and too full to go back and unhook it, June left her hat behind, planning to retrieve it in the morning. But the next morning when she looked for it, her hat was gone. Her mother said the wind must have blown it away, but June didn't remember it being windy.
(page break)

The summer before June started middle school, she returned to her grandmother's big old house with her family. Once again, she went straight to the blackberry bramble. She took a bucket with her so she could bring back some berries to share. Now that she was older and bigger, June had become braver, and she scrambled deeper into the blackberry thicket than she had ever gone before. She picked and picked and picked and picked. When she had filled both her belly and the bucket, she turned back toward her grandmother’s house and started to make her way out of the thick bramble, being careful as always not to trample any low branches.

The bushes swayed in the slight afternoon breezes and seemed to want to hold June back. Some thorns snagged her long braid, and when she couldn’t un-do the hopeless tangle, she took out her pocket knife and quickly cut off her braid. Feeling a little scared as she looked back at her braid dangling in the thorny clutches of the bramble's branches, June ran out of the bramble with one lopsided braid bouncing against her shoulder.
(page break)

Many summers later, June returned to the old farmhouse with her husband and young daughter. Leaving the two of them on the porch to read a book, June headed straight for the blackberry bramble. This time, she took along a large basket so she could bring back lots of berries to make pie and muffins for her family. She picked and picked and picked and picked until her fingers were sticky and purple. She tried to fill her basket before she filled her belly, but somehow ended up with both full of sweet berries.
(page break)

Once her basket was full, June started back through the thicket to the old farm house. But, just before she got to the edge of the bramble, she saw a cluster of plump, shiny blackberries glistening in the late afternoon sun. June reached out for the biggest one she could see, but just as she tried to pick it, a sharp thorn pricked her finger. The sudden stab of pain surprised her, and she quickly put her sore finger in her mouth and sucked on the bright red dot of blood that mingled with the sweet berry juice on her finger. She hurried out of the bramble, heading to the house to wash her hand and find a bandaid.
(page break)

Soon, June had bandaged her finger and was happily making blackberry pie with her young daughter in the sunny kitchen of the old farm house. Before long, she’d forgotten all about the nasty thorn prick.
(page break)

Many years later, June returned to the house when she was a grandmother herself. Her daughter, who was now grown up and married, and her baby granddaughter, whom she loved very much, had come with her. They arrived at the old farm house early in the evening, and soon after they got there, June’s daughter and granddaughter went out to the porch to shell fresh peas for supper. June went out to the blackberry bramble right away. She wanted to harvest just a few special berries for her granddaughter to taste.
(page break)

June entered the bramble, and watched the fireflies waking up all around her. As she watched them fill the air like tiny blinking stars, she thought she heard the blackberry bushes whispering a question. But, no, that couldn’t be! She listened again more carefully as she made her way deeper into the bramble where it was dark and cool and quiet. She heard the bramble whispering again! It was asking her for something!
"After so many years of giving you my berries," the bramble moaned softly, sounding almost like the evening breeze murmuring through the branches, "what do you have to give me in return?"
(page break)

June thought about the question before she answered it.
"But, but … I gave you that swatch of cloth from the hem of my dress," she said. "And you took my hat! And my braid! And, and … you pricked me and took my blood! What more do you want from me?"
"Your baby granddaughter," the bush moaned. "Give me your baby grandbaby."
"You are a heartless blackberry bramble!" June yelled at the bushes. "I will never give you my baby granddaughter!"
"Then you shall never taste the sweet berries from my bushes again!" the bramble boomed. A wave of rustles spread throughout the prickly branches, and storm clouds slid into the night sky above.
(page break)

June watched as all the big ripe berries around her began to shrivel up, and a flash of lightening streaked the sky. She rushed out, feeling afraid of the bramble’s harsh demand. But just before she reached the edge of the bramble, June spotted a berry that wasn’t shriveled yet. It was shiny and big, full of sweet blackberry juice. June grabbed the berry and popped it into her mouth as she stepped into the safety of the yard. Behind her, the bramble rustled with a low, restless shwoosh, and the first drops of a summer rainstorm plunked down on the top of June’s head as she ran toward the old farm house.
(page break)

During the summers that followed, the bramble turned dry and brown, and there were no sweet, juicy blackberries on its branches. When June and her family visited, everyone else assumed the bushes must have died. Maybe there hadn't been enough rain that year, they guessed. But there had been plenty of rain. June knew that it was her fault.
(page break)

Every summer, June went back to the old farm house and gazed out at the withered thicket. She longed for the sweet, juicy berries she’d eaten in her youth. Then one morning, when she couldn’t bear one more summer day without blackberries, she decided to make a deal with the bramble. Walking with her cane, wobbling a bit, she went deep into the thorny tangled bramble. There wasn’t a single berry in sight.
"Bramble, I know you are waiting for an offering from me," June said in her shakey, wise old woman’s voice, "and I'm ready to give you something."
"Are you ready to give me your granddaughter?" the bramble mumbled through the morning buzz of summertime grasshoppers and bumblebees.
"No, no …" June said, shaking her head.
"Then get out and leave me to rest," the bramble grumbled hoarsely. "I am too tired to make berries without your offering. I need to renew my life-energy."
(page break)

June took a deep breath before she spoke again.
"Let me have one last berry—a big perfect one like the ones you used to bear——and then take me instead of my granddaughter. She is young and has so much life ahead of her. I am old and have lived a long life filled with happiness and blackberries. I am so grateful for the sweet fruit you have shared with me."

Pleased that June felt so thankful, and impressed by her wisdom, the bramble fell silent. Suddenly, June heard a low rumbling sound coming from the deep old roots of the bramble. It was so faint, she wasn’t sure she heard it at all, but she felt the ground tremble under her feet. Then, she watched delightedly as a string of perfectly ripe berries burst out on the branches around her. They surrounded her like a hula-hoop of dark purple jewels, sparkling in the sun, eager to be picked.
(page break)

June started with the blackberry right in front of her, carefully picking it from its perch on the thorny branch. She felt grateful all over her body, right out to the tips of her fingers where she held the berry. When she put it in her mouth, she held it there for a moment before chewing down on it, cherishing the berry's perfect berry-ness. As she bit down on it slowly, she felt the juice release its sweetness onto her tongue. It was sweeter than any blackberry she’d ever tasted before in all her long life of summer berry picking! And, this berry’s sweetness streamed into every part of her body, from her happy belly down through her wiggling toes, finally swirling around her big, grateful heart.
(page break)

No one ever saw old June again, but her daughter and her granddaughter liked to think that she had decided to disappear into the bramble and stay there forever, happily nibbling on an endless ring of blackberries.
(page break)

Years passed, and one bright August morning, June’s granddaughter went skipping out across the yard toward the large patch of blackberry bushes she and her mother called Grandma June’s Bramble. The girl was thinking she would have fresh-picked blackberries for breakfast—maybe with a splash of fresh cream.
(page break)

She gently pushed aside the thorny branches, just as Grandma June had taught her, and made her way into the cool green world of the bramble. She gazed at the shiny blackberries all around her. After its long rest, the bramble’s branches were heavy with the weight of the biggest, juiciest, sweetest berries anyone had ever eaten. The little girl stepped carefully through the thick tangled bushes, remembering how Grandma June had told her not to crush or break the branches, to be careful and respectful of the bramble as she picked the berries it offered her.
(page break)

The little girl picked and ate and picked and ate until her belly couldn’t hold another berry, then she slowly made her way out of the bramble with each hand filled to the brim with blackberries for her mother. Just as she’d almost reached the thorny branches at the edge of the bramble, her little purple hair ribbon got snagged on a thorn, but she hardly noticed it was gone as she headed toward the old farm house, proudly holding out her handfuls of berries.

The End

mountainside

2007-10-02T00:37:00.000-07:00

today I was inside a big white cloud because it came into the house.
and then it left.