58 Someone

Night fell, but Flash remained wide awake. The unchanging blackness beyond the reach of his incandescent beams configured itself in his mind into forms of black dogs, black horses and black cloaked men racing from the unknown darkness.  The imagined forms carried a threat and Flash tried to distract his mind from the phantoms. What could trigger this fear?  Whatever it was, he felt certain he was not alone.


For hours, he peered into the darkness, and the demons of his own soul surfaced, filling him with dread. Outside the ship, nothing changed. 


By morning light, Flash had devised a plan. He would excavate some of the solids held in the ice, run tests on the rock, and get a sense of the makeup of the planet. 

The soft blue of morning brought a renewed sense of peace and hope.  His fear had been unfounded. 

He ate a hearty breakfast thanks to the table of elements, gathered his tools, bundled up and left the warmth and security of the TNI2. 

The ice appeared opaque again in the light of day. Flash set about with a pickaxe, in a location he had memorized during the long, sleepless night. 

The brittle ice gave way, leaving a small crater, but loosening a chunk of blue crystal that clearly contained something. Flash placed this into a bucket and the bucket into the TNI2. 

He saw no signs of life, yet he could not escape the sense of something, or someone else. 


He walked to the opening of the cave, feeling very small beneath its arches. The cloudless sky looked down on him, and he turned his gaze from it to the icy plain below. It stretched as far as his eyes could see. It sloped down away from him to the sea, many, many miles in the distance.  Miles of snow, disturbed only by the wind, had quieted since the day before. 

Then Flash noticed something in the distance. Something large and dark lumbered across the ice. 

57 Caves

From his vantage point within the TNI2, Flash fell from black into pale blue, plummeting toward a world of pure white. A windswept plain stretched out below him, bordered on one side by the sea, and on the other by cliffs that rose to mountain peaks.  Cave openings riddled a section of a cliff at ground level, and this is where Flash decided to touch down. The rest of the area appeared to be smooth, open ice.  A vast, frozen desert.  The caves might offer some shelter, and maybe access to the geology of the planet. 

The small space ship came to rest in front of the entrance to an enormous cave, and Flash examined his surroundings from the safety of the craft. The opening was just one of many, and the interior walls were shadowed in deep blue and purple. Icy pillars lined the walls as deep as Flash could see.  The caves reminded him of stacks of eviscerated bisected whale bodies. 

The wind raged, and cyclones of snow and ice climbed toward the cloudless sky.  Within minutes, a drift began to form around the pod, and Flash felt the best option would be to move the ship inside. 

The undulating  purple and blue walls loomed above the ship, reflecting light at the mouth of the cave, and receding to darkness deeper inside. The ancient columns of ice dwarfed any built by man, and Flash felt secure against any threat of a collapse. The question was, how deep he should go. 

Deep enough to escape the fierce winds, but not so deep as to be engulfed in pitch blackness. He could, however, illuminate his immediate surroundings with lights on the ship. It remained to be seen what the patterns of day and night would be on this planet, if any. 

The walls of the cave rose like an enormous ribcage, and here, Flash was protected from the harsh windchills outside. 

Waves of deep blue ice rippled along the sides of the corridor and receded into the dark depths. 

The air was pure. The temperature was chilly. Flash was accustomed to being alone in the cold blackness of space, but he found it disconcerting to be enclosed like this. 

Thoughts of an avalanche sealing the portal, creatures appearing from the dark to feed in the open air, or gradually succumbing to the cold crossed his mind. 

The pale blue light that filtered into the cave turned slightly pink and began to fade. Flash fired up the lights on the exterior of his ship. The yellow glow cast eerie black shadows into the alcoves.  The blue walls appeared translucent green in the glow, and Flash could see indistinguishable forms suspended within the ice. 

www.sparkshooter.com

56 Building Blocks

As Flash traveled further and further from Olo, he realized that he had no particular destination in mind, yet he looked forward to whatever adventure awaited him.

Scanning the nearby star systems, he was able to glimpse, at great distance, fantastic nebulae in every conceivable shape and color.  These, he charted, photographed, and recorded. He was mindful of the fact that no other Earthling had ever seen the wonders that he beheld.  Gas clouds burst out like slow moving fireworks. A glacially slow celebration, which was breathtaking and vast. 

When he was not gazing at stars, he read from the book he had picked up back on Olo. The book was like an intergalactic garage sale find.  It was a well used item that had outgrown its usefulness to the former owner, yet it fit him perfectly. He could not understand how his own story could have been told in its pages, and every time he opened it, he wondered at it.  Upon waking, he would open the book to see if it had been a dream, but there it was in black and white. His own thoughts and actions were told, and interspersed with other beautiful, heroic, unbelievable stories. Could they also be true accounts, as his own story was?

Back on Earth, people crowded the edges of the water, building their homes, whenever possible, with a view of a lake, river or ocean. This was never satisfying for Flash, who wanted to touch, or be submerged in the water rather than just see it in the distance. 

When looking at a mountain, he wanted to climb it or explore a cave beneath it. 

This is how he felt as he looked at the distant stars with their rings of orbiting asteroids and planets, and so he began looking for one that would support life.

He zeroed in on a planet whose scan showed oxygen and water, and set a course toward it. 

The blue and white planet sparkled like a diamond on the screen, and Flash wondered what he might find there.  It was an icy planet, but contained the building blocks of life. 

As Flash approached the Earth-sized planet, he began to see its swirling blue and white surface in greater detail. He’d seen other watery planets which did not have continents, and in this case, he could not be certain whether he was seeing clouds, continents or simply vast areas of ice-covered ocean.  His readings indicated that it was cold, with temperatures ranging around 100 degrees below zero fahrenheit.  Cold… Dangerously cold. But he was prepared for those bitter conditions, and even colder.

He would be safe inside his ship, and he had gear to protect him outside the ship as well. Once again, Flash found himself looking down on a planet from orbit. It was clear from this vantage point that there were continents under the ice floes. Spiraling clouds hung in the atmosphere, and passed over the frozen expanse. Flash had second thoughts about this. A lush, warm planet would be more inviting for sure, and yet he felt he had chosen this planet for a reason. Out of an infinite number of choices, he felt almost as though he had been called to this one. There was something familiar about it, for all the hostility of its climate, and he wanted to know what mysteries it might hold. Unknown forces held it in eternal winter, though its proximity to its sun was similar to that of Earth. 

If he sat and thought about it too long, he figured he might change his mind, so he gathered cold weather gear and opened the hatch to the TNI2. The temperatures out here in space were far colder than anything he would run into down there. 

Flash gazed down at the rippling whiteness, set against the deepest blue he could imagine, separated by a dynamic, jagged shoreline. What could it be that drew him here?

Thank you to Anne for this photo she took in Palmer, Alaska. Anne is a painter, glass and ceramic artist, a dear friend and one of my biggest inspirations in my painting. Check back for an episode based on her photo series!

For as long as I can remember, I have loved books. 

When I was a child, my mother would read to us on the love seat in our living room, or she would sit on my bedroom floor, her back against the bed, reading bedtime stories aloud. 

I did the same thing with my kids, and I even read them some of the same books my mother read to me. 

Most memorable was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis. 

She read the first couple of Narnia books aloud, and then I had to learn to read entire books myself in order to get the rest of the story. 

Much later, I went to college in Grand Rapids, Michigan, home of Eerdman’s, the publisher of Lewis’ books in the United States.  Their bookstore sold imperfect printings at up to 90% off retail prices, and I collected everything I could find by him. 

Through Lewis, I was introduced to George MacDonald, Charles Williams, Madeleine L’Engle, J. R. R. Tolkien and others who lit a passion in me for storytelling. 

There was another bookstore not far from campus where I bought several books which I still have, and still love today. The Little Prince and The Velveteen Rabbit among them. 

I read to my friends, I read to cabins full of campers during those summers. Now I read to anyone who will listen… To the annoyance of some. A friend told me this week that I am too much in love with the sound of my own voice. He prefers to read silently to himself. Sigh. I understand, but it leaves me out of the experience. 

Ok. So I need to choose my audience more carefully, or let my audience choose me. 

Hearing David Sedaris read his own work adds so much to his wonderful stories, don’t you think?

The last couple of years, the bookstore in my town has invited me to come and read at their shop during the full moon in the summer months.  When the weather allows it, we sit around a fire within sight of Lake Superior, and I read some of my favorite passages by some of my favorite authors, and sneak some of my own writing in, too. 

55 TroubadourFlash planned his exit from Olo’s gentle pull, plotting a course well away from his cetacean neighbors. In no time he came upon them again, rounding the far side of Olo, now further out from them.  He slowed so he could watch them, and his mind went back to a whale watching excursion he had taken on the Atlantic, off the coast of Africa.

He felt a thrill back then seeing whales surface and blow, or an occasional wave of a tail fluke. 

Now, the entire pod was clearly visible, almost illuminated against the dark velvet curtain of the universe. 

The whales were moving now, in formation. Slowly they circled, each following another, rising in an ever tightening carousel below the mother ship. 

Something glimmered out the side window, and Flash looked closer at it. A crystal… no… hundreds of crystals rose up from the whale pod, encircling his ship like a net. 

He had heard of something like this. Back on Earth, whales blew bubble nets to corral and feed on krill or small fish. 

He took stock of his situation. If these were like earth whales, he felt confident that they would not swallow him up. But these were not earth whales. If they rose up through the net of crystals, at least one of them would most likely collide with his ship. If he flew through the net, his ship could be damaged or even pierced. 

They continued their slow spiraling climb, still far below him. 

Flash simply followed the tunnel of crystals “up” away from the whales until the crystals subsided, and then doubled back outside of the net. 

As they continued, the crystals grew more plentiful. 

One great whale suddenly swam up the crystal funnel, it’s mouth open. Another followed behind it, and then the entire pod darted through the area feeding on something that was not apparent to Flash’s eyes. 

He watched their activity with great interest, and when it was over, the whales slowed again. All of the crystals appeared to be gone. 

One of the largest whales approached the mother ship. With it’s face on a level with Flash’s viewing screen, it slowly raised it’s tail until it was vertical (in relation to the ship), much like the whale had done when dropping Skip off down on the planet below.  The ship seemed to vibrate, and Flash turned his sound equipment back on. 

The whale’s song filled the compartment with heartbreaking tones that sounded like cellos and bass violins, laced with high pitched guttural sounds, and other acoustic elements that he had no words to describe. The song sounded ancient. Sad and hopeful at the same time, and Flash wanted it to go on and on. But no. The otherworldly troubadour finished his song and swam back toward the pod.  As he passed, they all turned and followed him away into deep space. Their time on Olo was over, and so was his.

 Now what?  Tiny Olo appeared tinier by the minute, and Flash couldn’t help thinking of his predicament twelve years earlier. The thought of being out in deep space beyond our solor system would have meant certain death.  Now he had come here by choice. 

For the past year, I’ve been trying to get Flash Meridian to the Planet Olo via the spaceship in my brain.  I’ve had a couple of weeks off from school over the holidays, and I wrote feverishly while I didn’t have weekly assignments weighing on my mind.  A new year started today, and Flash’s visit to Olo is over. Now I feel a little bit lost.  Maybe that’s an appropriate way to feel on New Year’s Day. 

The journey of 2011 was cathartic for me, bringing some difficult times back to the forefront of my memory. But rather than a vague sense of lies and injustices, I now feel compassion, as Flash did, for those who are hurt or are lost, and even those who try to control others in the name of love. 

While I can not change anyone, I can learn to fit pieces together and make sense of reality. I can question things and make up my mind based on evidence, waking every day to learn something I never knew before… about myself, about the world I live in, and about what it all means to me.

It is so unlikely that I would be here, whirling through space on this dynamic planet, aware of my own unlikelihood. But here I am, contemplating history and dreaming of the future. 

I string words together in an attempt to express something the way I string brushstrokes together on canvas or talk one on one with a friend. 

I think life is so beautiful, and also so sad. Sad and happy at the same time. 

If we want to be happy, we have to learn to feel every other emotion. That’s how we can tell the difference.  Besides, our emotions deceive us. So often, we think bad things are happening, only to see the incredible gift in it later. 

In school, I tend to compare myself with others, thinking everyone else is doing better than me. But everyone struggles. You can never know the secret insecurities that others face. Nor are we necessarily a good judge of our own progress. 

So my advice to me is to lighten up!  Do the best you can. Ask for help when you need it. Enjoy your brief time on this beautiful planet. Love yourself. Forgive others. Have a great year. 

54 DepartureFlash Meridian picked up the book and turned without saying another word. He boarded the TNI2 and lifted off the ground.  Hovering above the planet’s surface, he could move three dimensionally in limitless space. 

He flew over the colorful plains and toward the towering forms.  The vertical treelike shapes looked like they were made of glass, and when he was quite close, he could make out spirals that rose the height of the sky scrapers. These spiral features rose in zig zagging increments, a dizzying staircase to the clouds.  There were caves at intervals along the steps.

As much as Flash wanted to stay, something within him said it was time to go. 

The TNI2 rose gradually as Flash took in as much as he could below him. The mountainous forms gave way to a plateau on which stood a soaring castle, identical to the one Buffy and Skip had  constructed, only massive in scale. 

He rose higher and higher until pale blue gave way to black. Like a magnet, the mother ship drew him to it, and he was home. 

The hatch was his welcome mat, and the familiar clicking sound his greeting. 

He set the Ololian rulebook on the control panel, and did a quick radar scan in preparation for leaving orbit. 

Several objects were nearby. They were not asteroids. They were not ships. They were whales.