Category: Writing

Today, a man told me about his ghost and strange creature pictures. I just wanted you to know, because his stories were so simple and clear and convincing, and he was utterly comfortable with the telling.

He didn’t tell me about his ghosts as if he thought I would not believe him; neither did he tell me as if he felt a need to make me believe him. His attitude was straightforward and calm: he sees interesting things that, obviously, other people will also find interesting.

He drew me a diagram of how the footprints looked the night he saw the werewolf. It was cold and starlit, early winter, fresh snow, and he was working a late shift. He looked out his office window and saw the creature some yards away, walking slowly, and shifting, he said, shifting from human to wolf to human shape as it walked.

The place where he works is old enough, and it’s always had a few ghost stories of its own. A fire about a century ago nearly destroyed the great church next to his haunted building, gravestones and their long moonlit shadows on the snow create fantastic shapes, and the heavy wooden doors creak.

It’s the kind of place where you don’t struggle at all to believe your eyes when you think you see a night animal pausing in conversation with a moving statue. (Even when your less mystically-inclined friends prove it to be a trick of light and shadows.)

So, when he saw the werewolf walking towards his window, pausing to sniff at his carefully placed camera and unknowingly trip the switch, he knew what he was looking at. (If he has less mystically-inclined friends, they were not there that night to ruin his story.)

The werewolf left sharp-edged footprints in the snow, human, four wolf, another human. It stopped by the window and peered at the shiny glass. It turned and walked away. Human print, four wolf prints, human print, changing its massive shape, flowing from one to the other on the bright moonlit snow.

He has thousands of photos of ghostly, weird, and otherworld creatures. Some of them smoke pipes. Some fidget and are hard to photograph. Some are very, very old. Some are very, very odd. He told me that the ones with the great, large, wide eyes are among us now, if you look.

That, to me, is the point.

I don’t know what he sees. Perhaps his thousands of photos are blurred, fuzzy-edged, shapeless darkness to other eyes.

But he looks. All the time, he looks around, undoes the bars and locks of impossible, and he sees wonderful things.

I’m pretty sure, nearly certain, almost absolutely assured, that if I start looking, I’ll see wonderful things too.

[Featured Image by Raindrop, quote by James Thurber]

Early. That’s the result of going to sleep early and resisting the wee hours urge to pick up my phone and see what Instagram is up to. A decent sleep and I’m awake not long after the sun.

I made strong, rich, Irish Breakfast tea,  toasted a slice of fermented buckwheat bread,  and set up my book on the balcony window ledge. Cushions to sit cross-legged, sip tea and read under the rising sun.

The sky is a haze of hot clouds, silver-grey around the high-rise apartments and the round edge of sunfire I can finally see. It has a long way to climb.

When this building was new, the view would have been trees, glimpses of the river, and more trees. Probably a church steeple or two rising through the green and glinting early in the arriving sun.

I think I’d see a spreading, slow mound of soft light pile up along the edge of forest dark. I’d watch it fill the empty black, tip over, and spill through limbs and leaves. Beautiful, slow waiting. The sun will not be rushed.

And there she is. Full, bright face of fire looks at me. I can’t look at her, but I can let her see me.

I can’t stop her, I think.

Her brightness makes my skin transparent and my lies mere disintegrating threads. Her hands reach out to touch the river, shine the trees outside my balcony, and dart through my window the way the wasps dart through the curtained doorway.

(The wasps mean no harm, although they will hurt me if they must, if I resist, fight back, and stop their necessary flight.)

This morning, I let the sun probe. I let her burn away the warts and lies she finds. I let her take her time, pour into me slow, inevitable, right down to my new, clean toes. I breathe her in and I don’t fight back.

This is a good beginning to the day.

I hope yours began well too. If it didn’t, if you feel shredded and taut with anxiety, take a moment to feel the sun, to imagine her pouring her warmth into you. Breathe her in and don’t fight back.