BLOOD MOON_which Blogger obviously hates!!

Blood Moon.

I was watching it rise as I waited for the Beaumont blood courier at the Texas gas station we couriers call the "Star Wars Cantina" --

for all the colorful folk who frequent the place. I was actually followed into the men's room once by a woman offering financial romance, as it were.

I was saddened by how her addiction drove her to such desperation. I declined as politely as I could to save what remained of her pride.

I know the blood moon was a trick of the atmosphere bending the light rays. But it was beautiful. As I watched it slowly rise, I saw it change eerily from vanilla creme to stark skull white.

The Lakota believed the full moon's face of shadows belonged to the fearsome Turquoise Woman, for whom you should have respect for she had none for you.

And I thought how we change like this blood moon as we rise from the horizon of our birth.

Our spirits are bent by the atmospheres we send them through : the atmospheres of hope, dashed dreams, courage under pressure, and faith in he whom the Lakota call the Great Mystery.

I sometimes call Him that as well, for what He is up to much of the time is a great mystery to me.

When I was a substance abuse counselor, a client once told me his theory about the anguished history of this haggard world :

God put all the mad souls from the rest of the universe on this asylum called Earth,

where life after life, the souls would have the chance to learn to be wiser, saner -- most stayed insane because it was familiar if not comfortable.

Seeing the scufflings and hustling at the gas station night after night, I thought how my client's theory looks more and more credible.

The daily headlines help there, too. Then, again maybe I was just blood moonstruck.

What did Thomas Wolfe write?

"We are always acting on what has just finished happening.

It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we're in the present, but we aren't. The present we know is only a movie of the past. So, then, to every man his chance -

to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity -

to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself,

and to become whatever thing his soul and his vision can combine to make him."

May the windmills of your mind be a journey of peace and joy the rest of this week.

And here is an ancient but reflective song by Noel Harrison from the equally ancient classic movie THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR :

***
Blogger has prompted Hibbs to beckon me to walk off into the sunset, seeking new, fun horizons :

BLOOD MOON

Blood Moon.

I was watching it rise as I waited for the Beaumont blood courier at the Texas gas station we couriers call the "Star Wars Cantina" --

for all the colorful folk who frequent the place. I was actually followed into the men's room once by a woman offering financial romance, as it were.

I was saddened by how her addiction drove her to such desperation. I declined as politely as I could to save what remained of her pride.

I know the blood moon was a trick of the atmosphere bending the light rays. But it was beautiful. As I watched it slowly rise, I saw it change eerily from vanilla creme to stark skull white.

The Lakota believed the full moon's face of shadows belonged to the fearsome Turquoise Woman, for whom you should have respect for she had none for you.

And I thought how we change like this blood moon as we rise from the horizon of our birth.

Our spirits are bent by the atmospheres we send them through : the atmospheres of hope, dashed dreams, courage under pressure, and faith in he whom the Lakota call the Great Mystery.

I sometimes call Him that as well, for what He is up to much of the time is a great mystery to me.

When I was a substance abuse counselor, a client once told me his theory about the anguished history of this haggard world :

God put all the mad souls from the rest of the universe on this asylum called Earth,

where life after life, the souls would have the chance to learn to be wiser, saner -- most stayed insane because it was familiar if not comfortable.

Seeing the scufflings and hustling at the gas station night after night, I thought how my client's theory looks more and more credible.

The daily headlines help there, too. Then, again maybe I was just blood moonstruck.

What did Thomas Wolfe write?

"We are always acting on what has just finished happening.

It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we're in the present, but we aren't. The present we know is only a movie of the past. So, then, to every man his chance -

to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity -

to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself,

and to become whatever thing his soul and his vision can combine to make him."

May the windmills of your mind be a journey of peace and joy the rest of this week.

And here is an ancient but reflective song by Noel Harrison from the equally ancient classic movie THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR :

***
Blogger has prompted Hibbs to beckon me to walk off into the sunset, seeking new, fun horizons :

IF HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE_WHO ARE WE?

Don't forget to vote for Victor Standish :

http://www.wattpad.com/1073509-the-legend-of-victor-standish#comments

"Hell is other people."

Jean-Paul Sarte wrote that a long ago. A good friend quoted it last night in an email.

Recently, she received a rejection from what she called an Uber-Agent.

The agent wrote that if my friend was too stupid to know how to change the formatting of her email then she was too stupid for the agent's time.

Ouch.

When I first started out, I got a similar reply, and I learned how to do it.

I wrote my friend how to change her format. It's a guy-thing.

We hear a friend tell of a problem, we tell how to fix it.

Counselor Rule #1 : Listen beneath the words.

My friend is smart. She learned how to format all on her own, thank you very much. No. That wasn't the problem.

This same Uber-Agent was one of the players of last year's "Maybe we should bill our clients into poverty by the hour" debate.

Most agents are just like us :

overworked, underpaid, wondering how to pay the mounting bills in this harsh economy.

You really can't blame them for looking for new ways out of growing debt.

Counselor Rule #2 : Cruelty is never personal.

Now, when your nose has just been broken by a bully, it's hard to convince your pain of that. But it's true.

Cruelty is all about some lack, some insecurity in the instigator of it.

The Uber-Agent did my friend a favor.

The cutting rejection was just the tip of the iceberg.

It implied that the agent took the ability to hurt without consequence as license to do so.

I certainly wouldn't want a business partnership with a sadist. I want a professional.

As for wanting the allure of charging by the hour and the opportunity for abuse it would give ...

greed is never personal either.

But there is a reason we lock the doors when we leave home.

Not everyone is a crook. But they are out there.

Moral : Never wear a raw meat necklace in the jungle.

Counselor Rule #3 : Would you just shut up and do Rule #1.

My friend wrote me because she was beginning to believe that the world of agenting was harsh, greedy, and pain-inflicting.

Counselor Rule #4 : Sometimes the other person is right.

I agreed with my friend that sometimes business is a cold world of numbers. She was indeed right. I went further.

It just wasn't the world of agenting : the whole world was often that way.

Counselor Rule #5 : It is what is. What are you going to do now?

Resigning from the world is not an option.

Within you there is a path out of whatever jungle you find yourself.


Sign Post #1 : See the jungle through the other person's eyes :

Mostly the world runs on self-interest.

The agent is not Mother Theresa. She wants to make a good living for her efforts. Just like we do.

You are merely one of the means to do so.

If you're not helping her put money into her pockets,

then the time she is using on you is taking money out of those same pockets.

Solution : Make yourself worth her time.

Learn your craft. Strive to grow daily. Accept assholes as the price of living.

Try not to become an asshole yourself.

Help the people you meet along the way. Become the change you want to see in the world.


Sign Post #2 : Remember Rule #2

It hardly ever is personal when someone hurts you.

It comes from the hurt within them. Look for that hurt. Try not to step on that sore toe ever again.

As long as it is honorable, dance whatever dance that takes.


Sign Post #3 : If you're heading in the wrong direction, darting forward is certainly not going to get you to your desired destination any faster.

Sometimes harsh people are right in the wrong way. Look at your work. Could it be improved?

Of course it could.

Could you learn more about the busisness end of writing?

Of course you could.

Reading agents' blogs is like listening to Presidential Press Agents :

you are only hearing what they want you to hear.

Those blogs will give you a guide on how not to irritate the agents.

But the true skinny lies behind those curtains.


Sign Post #4 : Go behind those curtains.

The blogs that will help you do that :

WRITER BEWARE : http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/

WRITER BEWARE BLOGS : http://accrispin.blogspot.com/

VICTORIA STRAUSS : http://www.victoriastrauss.com/

ABSOLUTE WRITE WATER COOLER : http://absolutewrite.com/forums/

PREDITORS AND EDITORS : http://pred-ed.com/pubagent.htm

Two Books that will help you do that :


THE SONS OF MAXWELL PERKINS : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570035482/ref=kinw_rke_rti_1


{In April 1938 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins, "What a time you’ve had with your sons, Max—Ernest gone to Spain, me gone to Hollywood, Tom Wolfe reverting to an artistic hill-billy."

As the sole literary editor with name recognition among students of American literature, Perkins remains permanently linked to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe in literary history and literary myth.

Their relationships, lived largely by letters, play out in the 221 letters Matthew J. Bruccoli has assembled in this volume.

This collection documents the extent of the fatherly forbearance, attention, and encouragement the legendary Scribners editor gave to his authorial sons. The correspondence portrays his ability to juggle the requirements of his three geniuses.


SAVE THE CAT : http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277664679&sr=1-1

Blake Snyder was a working, selling writer himself, so that gives the reader a true inside glimpse into what it's like, what it takes, and what to expect on the long road to screenwriting success.

Many screenwriting how-to books are written by people who have few or no real studio credits, so with this book you are getting the info direct from the source of a successful member of the Hollywood elite.

Synder starts out with a bang, describing how important a good title, pitch and concept are, and giving tons of useful advise for whipping those log lines into shape, {the best shape ever in fact, for as the author points out, many industry powerbrokers won't even look beyond a log line...so it better be good. Very good}

He also gives an insider's look at the world of screenwriter's agents {which is not so different from the world of literary agents.}

************

I thought that if my friend felt as she did, then others out there in the blogverse probably did, too. I hope that today's post helped in some small way

***********
There are some hilarious Bruce Campbell soup labels you can print out and paste on your own soup cans to amuse friends who drop over at this site http://scifiwire.com/2010/06/four-labels-from-the-bruc.php

Because I like Bruce Campbell almost as much as I do CALVIN & HOBBES, here is the man himself doing a summation of my post :

SAILORS ON STRANGE SEAS_PART 2 OF 4_TWILIGHT'S CHILDREN

{For all of you out there who weren't quite ready for it to end for Wolf Howl,

here he is at the End of All Things in the year 2012.

Chained to the bed rail by a handcuff, Wolf Howl senses a dark, hungry presence at his hospital window.

He is quoting Thomas Wolfe on death

but stops in the middle of the passage as he spots the Mossad assassin, Shadow, standing in his doorway.

The remainder of her injuries from the Wendigo has been healed by the Turquoise Woman ....}



The door to my hospital room opened silent and quick. A chill filled the darkness within me.

Shadow, the Mossad assassin, stood in the doorway and looked at me with haunted green eyes. In her mid-thirties now, she had been a lost angel at twenty when I had spared her on the Isle of Skye.

Now she was just a fallen angel, no longer able to remember the scent of lost innocence.

She continued the Wolfe quote in a husking British accent,

"To lose the earth you know for greater knowing. To lose the life you have for greater life. To leave the friends you loved for greater loving.

To find a land more kind than home, more large than earth --"

She couldn't go on. Her jade green eyes seemed cold to most. But they were only a bold front to hide the fact that they had lost their way long ago. Maybe mine looked the same.

"I see the hours have been kind to your body but hard to your heart," I said.

Her smile was a raw wound. "It seems we only meet when death has you boxed in."

I glanced at the dark window, then back to her. "More than you know."

Green eyes flashed in sudden anger. "Oh, Wolf Howl, why did you have to bring a dead girl to a hospital? You knew what they would do to you."

"Abby died being true to her word to the Mossad. She deserved a decent burial. And I had to honor a worthy enemy."

She shook her living waterfall of black hair. "There will be no honor in how you will be treated."

"I am Lakota. We are used to that."

I cocked an eyebrow. "Last I checked you were Mossad. You with the Agency now?"

She made a face, gesturing gracefully with long fingers at her simple black business pant suit. "I still am. I have infiltrated the F.B.I. "

"Well, that must make you the most special Special Agent I've ever seen."

Her eyes became hollows. "I am their ... Expeditor."

She had spoken the last word as if it had been dipped in filth.

I looked away from the self-hate in her eyes up to the blank television mounted on the wall, a mute symbol of the wisdom of the White Man. No remote, of course.

Drew August, AKA Wolf Howl, was much too dangerous to be given something he could use as a weapon.

As if I needed a weapon. I was a weapon. GrandMother had seen to that.

And that was why, at first, all the intelligence agencies the world over had courted me. My face grew more sour.

As if I would be the bought dog of any government. I finally convinced each one of them I was not available.

That was when the fun began.

They all had come to the unofficial conclusion that if they could not have me, then no agency could.

The hunt had been on.

The F.B.I. sending their expeditor told me that they were tired of losing agents to me. But those who start the war have no right to complain of its cost.

I jerked lightly on the handcuff chaining me to the hospital bed railing.

Now they thought they had run me to ground. They couldn't imagine it was they, all the peoples of the world in fact, who were in danger.

I smiled like my namesake. What was it that an old friend had once told me ... God punishes us for what we can't imagine.

I looked up at the television. Its one great dark eye looked back down upon me. What was the latest craze in programing these days? Oh, yes, I remembered. Reality T.V.

Reality. I wanted to laugh. Or to cry. Maybe a little of both.

How like the White Man to smear himself in the blood and despair of strangers and call it entertainment.

To view desperate, talentless dreamers make fools of themselves and to laugh as they were fileted by smug judges. And the white doctors said I was insane.

Too much paranormal power had pushed me over the slippery cliff of reason their reports all read. I no longer saw reality as it was.

Maybe.

Or maybe I did see clear, and it was the white man who saw only what he expected ... what he needed to see.

It was in Man's nature to destroy himself, destroy the very world around him.

I kept looking up at the one eye of the television. A change crept into the room like chill, invisible fog. Life seemed to grow slow and terrible as when dream becomes nightmare.

Shadow, the very special Special Agent whispered, "Drew, are you doing this?"

I shook my head. "We are strangers now in the stars, sailors on strange seas."

Her full lips curled, "What the bloody hell are you going on about? They're the same stars."

"Yes, but the space we swim through has changed."

"Space is space."

"The Aztecs thought different. It is October of the last year in their calendar. We have until ...."

"December twenty-first. I know, I read those phony tabloids, too."

The blank cyclop eye of the television blurred. This put a whole new twist to "Reality TV."

No longer shiny and black, its surface grew gray and smoky. Faint tendrils of mist breathed from it as if from Hell.

"Check out time," I whispered.
***

***

HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE

Hell is other people.


Jean-Paul Sarte wrote it long ago. A good friend quoted it last night in an email.


Recently, she received a rejection from what is called an Uber-Agent. The agent wrote that if my friend was too stupid to know how to change the formatting of her email then she was too stupid for the agent's time.


When I first started out, I got a similar reply, and I learned how to do it. I wrote my friend how to change her format. It's a guy-thing. We hear a friend tell of a problem, we tell how to fix it.



Counselor Rule #1 : Listen beneath the words.


My friend is smart. She learned how to format all on her own, thank you very much. No. That wasn't the problem.


This same Uber-Agent was one of the players in the recent : "Maybe we should bill our clients into poverty by the hour" debate.



Counselor Rule #2 : Cruelty is never personal.


Now, when your nose has just been broken by a bully, it's hard to convince your pain of that. But it's true.


Cruelty is all about some lack, some insecurity in the instigator of it. The Uber-Agent did my friend a favor. The cutting rejection was just the tip of the iceberg.


It implied that the agent took the ability to hurt without consequence as license to do so. I certainly wouldn't want a business partnership with a sadist. I want a professional.


As for wanting the allure of charging by the hour and the opportunity for abuse it would give ... greed is never personal either. But there is a reason we lock the doors when we leave home. Not everyone is a crook. But they are out there.



Counselor Rule #3 : Would you just shut up and do Rule #1 :


My friend wrote me because she was beginning to believe that the world of agenting was harsh, greedy, and pain-inflicting.



Counselor Rule #4 : Sometimes the other person is right.


I agreed with my friend. She was right. I went further. It just wasn't the world of agenting : the whole world was that way.



Counselor Rule #5 : It is what is. What are you going to do now?


Resigning from the world is not an option. Within you there is a path out of whatever jungle you find yourself.



Sign Post #1 : See the jungle through the other person's eyes :


Mostly the world runs on self-interest. The agent is not Mother Theresa. She wants to make a good living for her efforts.


You are merely one of the means to do so. If you're not helping her put money into her pockets, then the time she is using on you is taking money out of those same pockets.



Solution : Make yourself worth her time.

Learn your craft. Strive to grow daily. Accept assholes as the price of living. Try not to become an asshole yourself. Help the people you meet along the way.



Become the change you want to see in the world.



Sign Post #2 : Remember Rule #2


It hardly ever is personal when someone hurts you. It comes from the hurt within them. Look for that hurt. Try not to step on that sore toe ever again. As long as it is honorable, dance whatever dance that takes.



Sign Post #3 : If you're heading in the wrong direction, going forward is certainly not going to get you to your desired destination.


Sometimes harsh people are right in the wrong way. Look at your work. Could it be improved? Of course it could.


Could you learn more about the busisness end of writing? Of course you could.


Reading agents' blogs is like listening to Presidential Press Agents : you are only hearing what they want you to hear. Those blogs will give you a guide on how not to irritate the agents. But the true skinny lies behind those curtains.



Sign Post #4 : Go behind those curtains.


The blogs that will help you do that :


WRITER BEWARE : http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/



WRITER BEWARE BLOGS : http://accrispin.blogspot.com/



VICTORIA STRAUSS : http://www.victoriastrauss.com/



ABSOLUTE WRITE WATER COOLER : http://absolutewrite.com/forums/



PREDITORS AND EDITORS : http://pred-ed.com/pubagent.htm



Two Books that will help you do that :


THE SONS OF MAXWELL PERKINS : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570035482/ref=kinw_rke_rti_1


{In April 1938 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins, "What a time you’ve had with your sons, Max—Ernest gone to Spain, me gone to Hollywood, Tom Wolfe reverting to an artistic hill-billy."


As the sole literary editor with name recognition among students of American literature, Perkins remains permanently linked to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe in literary history and literary myth.


Their relationships, lived largely by letters, play out in the 221 letters Matthew J. Bruccoli has assembled in this volume.


This collection documents the extent of the fatherly forbearance, attention, and encouragement the legendary Scribners editor gave to his authorial sons. The correspondence portrays his ability to juggle the requirements of his three geniuses.



SAVE THE CAT : http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277664679&sr=1-1


Blake Snyder was a working, selling writer himself, so that gives the reader a true inside glimpse into what it's like, what it takes, and what to expect on the long road to screenwriting success.


Many screenwriting how-to books are written by people who have few or no real studio credits, so with this book you are getting the info direct from the source of a successful member of the Hollywood elite.


Synder starts out with a bang, describing how important a good title, pitch and concept are, and giving tons of useful advise for whipping those log lines into shape, {the best shape ever in fact, for as the author points out, many industry powerbrokers won't even look beyond a log line...so it better be good. Very good}


He also gives an insider's look at the world of screenwriter's agents {which is not so different from the world of literary agents.}

************

I thought that if my friend felt as she did, then others out there in the blogverse probably did, too. I hope that today's post helped in some small way

***********
There are some hilarious Bruce Campbell soup labels you can print out and paste on your own soup cans to amuse friends who drop over at this site http://scifiwire.com/2010/06/four-labels-from-the-bruc.php

In honor of today being Bruce Campbell's birthday, here is the man himself doing a summation of my post :

BLOOD MOON

Blood Moon.

I was watching it rise as I waited for the Beaumont blood courier at the Texas gas station we couriers call the "Star Wars Cantina" -- for all the colorful folk who frequent the place.

I was actually followed into the men's room once by a woman offering financial romance, as it were. I was saddened by how her addiction drove her to such desperation. I declined as politely as I could to save what remained of her pride.

I know the blood moon was a trick of the atmosphere bending the light rays. But it was beautiful. As I watched it slowly rise, I saw it change eerily into vanilla creme then to stark skull white. The Lakota believed the full moon's face of shadows belonged to the fearsome Turquoise Woman, for whom you should have respect for she had none for you.

And I thought how we change like this blood moon as we rise from the horizon of our birth. Our spirits are bent by the atmospheres we send them through : the atmospheres of hope, dashed dreams, courage under pressure, and faith in he whom the Lakota call the Great Mystery. I sometimes call Him that as well, for what He is up to much of the time is a great mystery to me.

When I was a substance abuse counselor, a client once told me his theory about the anguished history of this haggard world : God put all the mad souls from the rest of the universe on this asylum called Earth, where life after life, the souls would have the chance to learn to be wiser, saner -- most stayed insane because it was familiar -- if not comfortable.

Seeing the scufflings and hustling at the gas station night after night, I thought how my client's theory looks more and more credible. The daily headlines help there, too. Then, again maybe I was just blood moonstruck.

What did Thomas Wolfe write?

"We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we're in the present, but we aren't. The present we know is only a movie of the past. So, then, to every man his chance - to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity - to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his soul and his vision can combine to make him."

Seeing the haunted face etched upon this blood moon, I thought of a similar moon face which belonged to the Turquoise Woman in my Native American fantasy.

HIBBS THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS is a fantasy born of the tales my mother told me as I lay shivering in my bed, growing weaker and weaker from the double pneumonia that almost killed me one terrible winter.

As I stared up at the blood moon, I remembered the teaching lessons she had told me of Hibbs when he had been a cub. Hibbs, the cub with no clue, she had called him. One in particular came to mind : when, as an exile in ancient Ireland, Hibbs remembers back to a time when he walked with the Turquoise Woman through the dread Valley of the Shadow ...

*********************

Hibbs' scalp suddenly prickled. Yet again, Hibbs' present had been swallowed up by his past. No longer was he in Eire nor even a grown bear. And instead of the wet smell of spring, the crisp chill of Autumn tickled his wrinkling nose. But he was still walking beside a long-striding Estanatlehi.

It was his first week in the Valley of the Shadow -- long before he knew it well enough to be cautious of what lay within its dark corners. And he wasn't exactly walking beside GrandMother. Rather he was bouncing all around her, filled with the energy and wonder of all young cubs.

The Turquoise Woman was frowning at him as he skipped and leapt in a circle around her. "I hate to see you so sad."

"Oh, GrandMother," giggled Hibbs. "You're so funny."

Estanatlehi smiled faint. "I do believe that you are the first to say that of me."

"Truly? Wheee! I'm the first. The very first. I bet I'm the first bear to explore this wonderful valley, too."

A thin arch of lightning rose skeptically over one turquoise eye. "Wonderful? I do believe that once again you are the first to call this valley that as well."

Hibbs did a hand-stand as he bounced around The Turquoise Woman. "What a day of firsts! It's great to be an explorer, isn't it?"

Estanatlehi sighed, "True, there is something to be said for heading into unexplored territory --- Uffff!"

Hibbs had collided into her side as he miscalculated his next hand-stand. She stopped suddenly and gestured. The young cub froze upside down in mid-air. Twin turquoise eyes narrowed as she bent and placed her face right next to the face of the frightened bear.

"But there is also something to be said for knowing where you are going."

"Wanunhecun, (mistake in Lakota)," muttered Hibbs out of a dust dry throat.

Turquoise eyes narrowed further, and Hibbs managed to get out the one word, "S-Sorry."

Snow suddenly started to swirl around the upside-down cub. "Better."

Hibbs let out a sigh of relief. Of course, he had misunderstood her as he so often did. And The Turquoise Woman reached out and sharply tweaked his nose.

"N-Not better?"

Estanatlehi murmured in words of winter, "No. Not 'sorry.' But 'better.'"

Hibbs' eyes widened. "Oh, you mean -- don't be sorry. Be better."

Long ivory fingers gestrued gracefully, and the cub landed on his head. Hard. But Hibbs merely giggled and rolled to his feet, hugging the startled Turquoise Woman.

"Got it right that time didn't I, GrandMother?"

And feeling the warmth of the young cub's trusting embrace about her legs, Estanatlehi lost all her former anger. She reached down and gently ruffled the top of Hibbs's furry head. All the tension left her voice as she spoke.

"Yes."

Her eyes sparkled with something that rarely touched them -- amusement. "And no."

Hibbs looked up with such nose-wrinkling puzzlement that Estanatlehi had to laugh. "How can it be both 'yes' and 'no' at the same time, GrandMother?"

This time her fingers were gentle as she tweaked his nose. "Oh, Little One, sometimes it appears that your whole life is both 'Yes' and 'No.'"

"Truly?"

"Truly."

She reached down and gently tugged on his small right ear. "Come, and I will show you."

Though he felt like he would burst from just simply plodding along, Hibbs forced himself to walk beside GrandMother. His steps were so small compared to her long strides though that he happily found it was necessary to skip to keep up. Estanatlehi shook her head in wry amusement.

"This path is much different in summer than it is now in Autumn. These gentle slopes, so pleasant to walk upon in summer, turn slippery and dangerous with winter snows."

Hibbs squinted this way and that as he tried to imagine the trees and grass about him covered with the magic of first snowfall. The brittle leaves of Autumn tickled the bottom of his bare feet, and he fought a giggle. A hawk cawed high overhead, and the young cub strained to make it out. But it flew high into the clouds too quickly for him to pick it out against the utter blue of the sky.

Estanatlehi tugged a bit sharper on his ear to snare his ever-wandering attention. "Yet in winter, we could safely walk over this very spot where in summer rattlesnakes love to hide."

"Yikes!," squealed Hibbs, slamming hard into Estanatlehi's left leg as he leapt in fright from the imagined attack of slumbering rattlesnakes rudely awakened by scampering bear feet.

The Turquoise Woman sharply gestured with long ivory fingers, whose tips sizzled with sparks of black death. Yelping in fear and surprise, Hibbs was lifted bodily high in the air by the threads of Life until his eyes stared unhappily straight into eyes which had blasted the very flesh from the bones of Lakota warriors foolish enough to anger her.

"Does the air feel like summer to you?"

"I know it is Autumn, but --"

Turquoise eyes narrowed dangerously. "Autumn. Not summer. So by my very words, you know you are safe."

Hibbs swallowed hard and managed to get out, "You wouldn't say that if you were on my side of your eyes."

Estanatlehi stiffened, then laughed long and deep. "Oh, Little One, whatever did I do before you?"

As he was lowered gently to the dry leaves, Hibbs rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. "Probably walked without getting your feet stepped on."

Her head cocked slightly, and long, cold fingers gently ruffled the fur on the top of his head. "But I never laughed. Never. I believe a bruised toe or two is a small price for me to pay."

She tugged sharp on his right ear. "Now, what have you learned from all this?"

Hibbs looked up lovingly into her face and wanted so hard not to see it grow cold again. He thought and thought and thought. The obvious answer would only raise storm clouds again. An eyebrow of living lightning rose slowly.

Snakes in summer. Slippery tumbles in winter. The same path. His furry brow wrinkled as his tiny eyes squinted in hard thought. His eyes suddenly widened, and he smiled big.

"Different seasons make for different paths, even on the same spot."

The eyebrow of lightning kept rising, and Hibbs stuttered, "U-Uh, and -- and --- I guess that means that no one walks the same path twice even though it is the same road."

Hibbs heaved a sigh of relief as Estanatlehi's full lips slowly smiled. "I believe the end of the world must be near."

"Wh-What?"

Full lips struggled to be sober and lost. "It is written : there shall be plagues, floods, and famines. Little Hibbs will actually learn a lesson. Then shall the End come."

"Oh, GrandMother, you scared me."

She gently stroked the top of his head. "It is a natural talent."

Hibbs couldn't think of anything to say to that which wouldn't end up with him becoming even more scared, so he just hugged GrandMother's legs. Icy fingers patted his cheek. Hibbs smiled wide. For once, he had chosen the right path.

And abruptly, Hibbs was back in the present. And yes, he was still smiling but it was a sad smile, nonetheless, with echoes of loss and beckoning darkness. He looked to GrandMother and saw her lips twisting up in the same smile.

"The right path," he whispered.

Estanatlehi's hair of living lightning shivered as she nodded. "So you still remember?"

"I remember each of our walks, GrandMother."

His forehead wrinkled along with his nose as he said low, "No one walks the same path twice -- even if it is the same road. Were you trying to tell me just now that even though I will walk the same unexplored territory as this other, I do not have to share his fate -- because I am different than he?"

Estanatlehi nodded even more slowly. "Yes."
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May the windmills of your mind be a journey of peace and joy the rest of this week. And here is an ancient but reflective song by Noel Harrison from the equally ancient classic movie THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR :