because i love Halloween.....

i've written a book.  it's quite dark and i love it.  it's the dark side of the moon that is me.  my Dragon loved being my proofreader.  he kept begging for the next chapter.

well, in honor of him, and of Halloween, here is the first paragraph and the last two of one of the chapters.  i hope you enjoy.  and then i hope it keeps you up at night.  just for while.




As soon as he realized he was losing his mind, and quite possibly his life, it seemed ironically apropos to Ryan that he would lose it all in the cemetery of an insane asylum though he wasn’t sure if he was technically still in the cemetery any longer.  He thought about what constituted sanity; whether or not the realization of one's predicament was a criteria, and then those thoughts segued for him into wondering if anyone would ever find his body.


Late that summer workers eventually came again to work on the asylum committee’s memorial to their long dead patients.  Their stash of clean granite stones for etching was still at the bottom of the hill off to the side, still under the tree.  It was down in the oldest part of the cemetery and in an area that none of the workers really liked.  It gave them all the creeps.  The air was different down there; it was different all over the cemetery, but it was truly stifling down there.  It felt like no breath of a breeze had ever blown across that part.  One of the men had just finished mowing the grass and the silence after the mower was deafening.  Two of the other workmen were sitting in the shade to take a break after taking three of the stones off the pallet for names to be engraved on them.  Drinking from bottles of water, both the men froze listening.  The man who’d mowed walked up to join them and was hushed by the other two.  Tilting their heads they looked off into the woods.  Sunlight tried to work its way through the heavy summer foliage causing a riot of shadow, light green, darker green, and the deep brown of the tree trunks.  They men listened and all three heard it this time.  A cell phone was ringing not too far off in the woods.  It stopped suddenly and they heard a voice say, “Ryan, it’s your mother again.  What should I tell her?”
 

And then the giggling started.

trying to be what she's not.

Bunny has been down, again, still, whatever. it is the same tune, different day.

so whatever. she is sad and is not getting really any better. she has hit a plateau in her grief. is there another place she should be at, or on? she cannot see it from where she is. just one day after another. that's all she does. she has no real future.

shit. bad vibes again. stop it, Bunny. keep those negative thoughts for your personal journal.

brighter posts. faux good times.

they let us wear Halloween costumes at work for that weekend. Bunny has been working on hers. she wants to be a forest fairy. here are the wings she made. she has been working on them off and on since July.

so here she is.
and the back.
Bunny loves her wings.

she wishes she could "fly me away with you, my love."

Bunny smiles to herself when she thinks about what Dragon would say about her silly, glittery forest fairy wings.

*sigh*

Halloween and beyond

it's happening again. every night i go to sleep and the world doesn't end. the next day comes, time marches on, and i have to get up and live. my daughter got married. Halloween is coming and after that...... i can't cope with after that.

i had to go get more embroidery floss and i always feel a small level of thrill at the thought of looking at all the colors. i'd love to have one of each. can't but it's a dream. walked through the doors and, though i anticipated the early arrival of snowmen and Santa, trees and ornaments, i didn't anticipate the sudden inability to breathe.

it's going to come whether i can cope with it or not so i better put on my big girl pants and start practicing. i'll start with Halloween.

he loved Halloween. said it was the one day he didn't have to put on a mask. funny man. he was always a pirate. he said it was his true nature. he'd do the "arrrrr" sound deep in his throat and it was never hokey. the man could pull it off.

we'd go to the farm stands. they are all over New England. out of the larger cities, you can't throw a stone for hitting a small orchard that has a farm stand. i love them. i'm going to miss them. the photo is of the one we could walk to. yeah, an orchard close to the ocean. the man's land has been in his family since America belonged to the King of England. it sits close to Dogtown and isn't large by New England standards but is delightful to see considering all the terminal moraines and granite outcroppings that litter the coastline north of Boston gratis of the last ice age. the owner has enough dirt to maintain apple trees and a host of other vegetables. also bees for honey and, as a sideline his daughter brought in, a small shop that sells to the tourist crowds with things brought in plus art from the locals. she took in and sold my driftwood sculptures there. i was just getting a foothold in the community with my art - my sculptures, my stained glass, and my textiles.

we were going to have a good, quiet life by the ocean. we would go out after storms to find the driftwood and treasures the ocean had thrown back. i would create art from the things abandoned by even Mother Nature.

but he died. the only dragons i have are the ones i'm embroidering. he's around, i guess. but i hope more and more that he doesn't see me like this. i pray he's happy in Heaven and doesn't know how lonely and sad i am; that he doesn't see me ache for him like i do. i'm trying so hard to "get better" as it's been put, but i am slower i guess than others. i'm taking my time to "get better."

us finding each other was a miracle. i thanked God everyday for him. i told him every day how handsome i think he is, how much i love him. he knew. he knows. it's me that doesn't know. so much of my family has died. i'm so very alone. my two children are so great at making sure i'm alright. i just can't talk to them about some things because they are my children however adult they are.

i miss him. i got my full moon photos printed. all 9 of them. the one from the night he died and the other 8 that have occurred since he died. the man at the photo store said, "very nice moon photos. i can see your passion for the full moon." i didn't tell him it marks the passing of another month since my husband died. this "passion" seems too eccentric to put my face and name to it.

i saw the weather this morning. there's a hard freeze warning out tonight for Rockport. wind off the ocean will be chilling.

frost on the pumpkins. oh, Lord, how i miss my Dragon.