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Feed the Window and Water the Kitchen 2

This post is a continuation of the previous post.  Please read that one first. The instructions were detailed and clear, which did make my responsibility simple. Todd had been right on that score. Her property couldn’t have been very large as it fit in the neighborhood with everyone else’s average-sized backyards. But, like her house, she had created some magical way to make it feel like its own secluded oasis. I found it through a portal off the kitchen. I hazard to call it a door since it was more of a series of openings between flora, first trees similar to the ones that made the shelves, then thicker and thicker trunks until I swear I walked through one. Each cleave in the plants was offset to the one before it so once outside I could not see back inside. I’m not sure at what point I left the structure of the house. This portal led to a stone labyrinth path. Quiet contemplation seemed a fitting way to enter a garden oasis. I saw a path curving around the outside of the labyrint

Feed the Window and Water the Kitchen

I agreed to watch her house at her request, via her brother. He and I had been work friends for many years but I never knew he had a sister, perhaps because she was always away on trips like this one. He showed me into the house one evening after work. “She’d prefer if you took your shoes off,” he said as he removed his own in the doorway. The approach to the house from the curb looked akin to all the other homes on the suburban street but as soon as we stepped inside I could see that her world was an entirely different story. Her foyer welcomed me with patterns in the intricate inlaid wooden floor. The carved chair rails along the walls and the glowing rows of lights on the ceiling radiated out from this front entrance. The open layout of the house made it seem much bigger on the inside- perhaps it was the bright blue 10-foot high ceilings. Giant fish tanks covered her front picture windows. Sunlight still shined in but it danced on the floor and walls from the water’s refraction

First Book (a poem)

A poem inspired from the first book I can remember from my childhood:                 First Book Anything is possible, child. Anything can happen. If you can hold it in your imagination You can bring it forth to be. Just because you haven’t seen it Doesn’t mean they will not see. Anything can happen, child. Anything can be. Yes that means the scary, too The falling, broken, lies and such. Because that’s where the turning comes The triumphs, highs, and change. For when you return to tranquil days You’ll be the better for it. So set out from here where curiosity spurs And explore your mind for more Because there’s more in there than there is out here. And you’re just the one to bring it. Anything can happen, child, Anything you seek.                                                                                                                    C.NellJohnson 12/2017

Feeling Nostalgic

When the only way to reach someone, who was not already standing right in front of you, was to call them on the phone and hope they were home or write them a letter and drop it in the mail or get yourself physically over to their dwelling place and leave a paper note taped to their door, that was when showing up to regularly scheduled events was really important.   School, church, work. Getting a hold of you was actually quite difficult, and the present moment did a much better job. Sure, there were still the day-dreamers who couldn’t be contained by glass and concrete.   But most of us were stuck in our immediate surroundings and unknowingly happier than if we had had a tap on everything and everyone else in the world like we do now.             When my tweenage friends and I were wandering through the woods miles from our houses, that’s where we were.   We knew we weren’t supposed to be, but we were.   No one could call a rectangle in our pockets to tell us of a better party acr