WATER SPOUT

In the demetry of reasonable fate, I wake up to the whir of a million hamster wheels. The horde of images rushes by, casting one up on shore, flipping. It is strangely comforting, a battered truck that probably hauled prunes once. It's gap toothed driver is smiling. “Master Kline, we have emptied the silos, where would you like these missiles dumped?” I am uncertain. They are painted orange, a color that most certainly will frighten the birds, my friends. Casually, without tipping anyone to my fears, I consign them to an ambulance, surely a prop borrowed out of my vast warehouse.

Everything will take care of itself. On the marquee of my Hypno Dome:Fire and Fury. Inside we find the dear leaders meeting at a line marked DMZ. Letters are exchanged. Everyone is smiling, and in fact there is laughter that slowly accelerates, becoming a siren.

The World Sanity Organization arrives, wearing a dragon suit, and strings yellow tape around the scene, declaring it a propaganda disaster.

Undeterred, I decide to wake up and go sweep the porch. The origin of some ideas is untraceable.

&

&

Carl Jung said never to give a seminar on active imagination without telling this story:

The Rainmaker

There was a drought in a village in China. They sent for a rainmaker who was known to live in the farthest corner of the country, far away. Of course that would be so, because we never trust a prophet who lives in our region; he has to come from far away. So he arrived, and he found the village in a miserable state. The cattle were dying, the vegetation was dying, the people were affected. The people crowded around him and were very curious what he would do. He said, 'Well, just give me a little hut and leave me alone for a few days' So he went into this little hut and people were wondering and wondering, the first day, the second day. On the third day it started to rain and he came out. They asked him, 'What did you do?' 'Oh,' he said, 'that is very simple. I didn't do anything.' 'But look,' they said 'now it rains. What happened?' And he explained, 'I came from an area that is in Tao, in balance. We have rain, we have sunshine. Nothing is out of order. I come into your area and find that it is chaotic. The rhythm of life is disturbed. The whole thing affects me and I am absolutely out of order. So what can I do? I want a little hut to be by myself, to meditate, to set myself straight. And then I am able to get myself in order, everything is set right. We are now in Tao, and since the rain was missing, now it rains.'

&

&

The blank page rides again. Muse saddles up, Planchette Pen takes charge, we're out for a ride into infinity. There are some ideas, judging from past journeys, way beyond what I can simply imagine, just stay out of the way. Here we go --

Mother Earth possibly attracts aliens. Not to worry. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence so far hasn't turned up any. We are uninteresting, right? An invasion seems unlikely. Yet lurking in the background, who would suspect that distances measured in light years, so far away, might be irrelevant. Travel time, and the energy to push a space ship so far, could amount to nothing.

Could they already be here? Camouflage is best that appears indistinguishable from its environment. It's so easy to miss. Suppose by some slight flicker of attention a stray thought out of a busy mind is mistaken for a stray cat. A lapse of attention mistaken for a day dream. A great many people are actually sleepwalkers anyway and would rather not be disturbed. A treatise on making compost would be front page news, by comparison.

An unsettling aspect of ESP is that across any distance, the effect is instantaneous. Consider precognitive knowledge. Light years mean nothing. And travel time?

Idle speculation? But possibly you are now in the midst of a reply. Perhaps it would be in the course of a dream, or while talking with a neighbor, or taking a shower, walking down the street. Thinking about it is rather difficult – that's the trick. How can thoughts not yet thought be monitored?

&

&

I keep cycling through the backyard. It might sound boring, but every time around starts at a little higher level. True, plus or minus a heat wave or a rain storm, strong winds from time to time that get dismissed as passing anomalies, it would seem as uninteresting as we do to aliens. However, unexplained events do happen.

Just let it roll. Just in time shipping. Put it up on the dock for pickup just as fast as it comes in.

This morning or maybe around noon, out of sync with the usual rhythm, I still hadn't put walnuts on the fence or seeds in the feeder. Robin was out there, pacing around to let me know. So I said . . . “OK, wait a minute.”

Of course when I got back after breakfast he was still there and, patience restored, had resumed his habit of plucking seeds off the ground, looking at me somewhat quizzically as I reminded him about the bits on the fence. It's a conversation where I do most of the talking. But he often acts as though he'd like to get closer. He jumps onto the lawn, hopping by degrees towards my chair. Maybe my shoulder would be a good perch?

And out of nowhere suddenly he has a name-- Andrew. And his mate is Claire. For all the years we've known each other they've been just robins, very friendly, and watching over us, curious, unafraid. And through many changes, some very difficult. As when the falcon raided their nest, took their chick, and dashed it onto the street. Or when their home of years, the oleander 'tree' on the front lawn nextdoor, got cut down. Yet they have remained, living close by.

Where did their names come from? Robins do not have a mailbox. But to have names, to affirm their existence in a way like mine, means I know, even if I don't know how.

“Andrew!” He looked me in the eye. The effect was electric.