XXXXX [DRAFT IN PROGRESS]
15 December 2025
Things are broken, I know.
Nestled among dry grasses, a rock rent by a crack
Hollow.
The burned-out center of a nevertheless thriving giant redwood, with a cloud of green branches high above a portico of healthy bark framing the dark-cathedral charred interior
Held out over the stick-littered bottom of the hollow a few feet below, a human foot with an ant tattoo, scuffed with flipflop-shaped dirt
Empty spaces, however, are often guarded by dragons.
An unusually formed redwood’s twisted limb, which looks like the lowered head of a watchful dragon
Their jagged mouths can channel love’s flow.
Down a brown grassy hillside, a dry channel that in wetter times directs a flow into a small corrugated-metal culvert that disappears into the earth
The other end of the culvert, opening toward the wide-open ocean, with “AMOR” written in black marker on the side of every metal ridge
Where insides have been hollowed out—stripped bare—friends can safely make their homes.
A mole poking their head out of a hole in an old stump, between an oceanic-blue-and-white water bottle and a paper bag
A tiny jumping-spider crouched among dead scraggles of grass on a flat expanse of dry dirt and pebbles that is apparently otherwise devoid of life
From hollow throats comes song.
Atop a dry grassy hillside, a bare bush hosting a speck of a bird, with a couple of dark redwoods beyond
The song of one draws many.
The same bush closer up, now with at least four birds in it
And oh, how they speak to the broken-open heart.
The same bush closer up, now with at least six birds in it, as well as someone in air nearby, either another bird at a greater distance or an insect closer up
Remember that humans are mostly good and kind and that we are a family of folks just doing our best.
—Amanita Dreamer, “It’s Terribly Mid-October Time”
The unicorns are coming through.
A foamy wave with wind blowing spray back, such that the magically minded might see a herd of horned equines plunging toward the rocky shore
This has been foretold in many places and many ways.
Drawn in dirt of the rear window of an SUV that has a surfboard on the roof rack: a dark wave in a circle (perhaps indicating a reality separate from what comes after), followed by a light spike and a light wave, followed by intriguingly less-distinguishable shapes in dark and light mottled by a reflection of tree branches, at least one of which looks like another wave—beyond all of which (including the SUV) is a tractor with a farm implement attached
Wherever unicorns are, all heaven breaks loose!
A great foamy burst of a wave, exploding across most of the image
We pieces—when well rooted, with good grips on solid ground—can dance in the chaos without being carried away.
Clusters of seaweed that look like a dance party of miniature palm trees rooted to a flat outcropping of rock, having just been doused by whitewater now draining away in little falls
Not that there’s anything wrong with being carried away.
At the wet edge of a rock outcropping that itself looks like a stony splash, a man in a spray-splattered brown T-shirt watching a bird flying from left to right over ocean froth
The same moment, but with the bird carrying the gaze onward
That’s how seeds are planted.
A swirl of dry scrub grass topped with cottony blobs like splatters of seafoam
There are countless kinds of beautiful, after all.
The bottom of a sign on a weathered wooden wall, on which reads: “Behold The Beauty Association: IT’S FREE!”
A portrait of the redwood whose arm we saw before, showing more low massive swooping limbs and an undulating trunk among much younger, second-growth trees
Unruly beauty can prove too much trouble for the lumberjack’s saw.
The underside of a couple of the redwood’s aberrant limbs, their chaotic formation a bane to chainsaws and anathema to board-foot conformity
Of course many beauties can draw you to your death.
On a dead stalk of grass culminating in an empty seedhead, a large, brilliant-green mantis of great boon to humans (and potentially fatally alluring if you’re a male mantis and she’s hungry)
When you stop and think about it, what painfully exquisite joy it is to know beauty worth dying for.
At a stop sign, a big white industrial truck, across the back of which, painted in fading red, is the word “SMILE”
What’s on the other side beckons, too.
A gnarled dead snag among grasses and living trees, with one branch pointing or reaching like an arm toward a ray of sunlight
Barely distiguishable from rocks in the foreground, a distant buck trotting away down a dry grassy hillside toward a dark redwood draw, on the other side of which the landscape opens toward the ocean, from which a large rock formation rises
Beyond a dry grassy hillside lit with low rays of sunlight so that the grasses look like sparkles, at the edge of which are a few bare bushes dotted with a couple of bird silhouettes, the wide-open ocean illuminated with a Sun-path leading toward the horizon, which is also aglow
The Bluebird of Happiness and the Yellow Bird of Freedom-and-Understanding are good guides.
A bluebird plushie on a dashboard scattered with large feathers, beyond which is a lifelike goldfinch affixed to the back of a wiper blade
Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.
—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
With the Sun peeking around one side, the redwood seen before, close up: a strange angel appearing even more massive but with feathered fingertips brushing the sky
When the Sun disappears this time of year, these avians say simply, Stay warm and eat.
A glimpse of what at first simply appears to be conifer branches but upon closer inspection reveals a tiny bird like an encapsulation of shadow and light pausing briefly in foraging to regard the viewer
I put on a hoodie and rustle up some nourishment.
A bright view—from under the shade of dark branches—of a picnic table on a dry cropped-grass hill looking out over an ocean aglow under the unseen Sun and a dark edge of forest
Our modern celebrations are all about spending money. But the old practices of following the year and cycles are about how it feels to be here now. The practices are made to help us cope with those emotions and move them. . . . It helps us let go of the distractions of fall, and helps us pantomime outwardly the slow march toward the things we cannot always control or see in the dark, both figuratively and literally.
—Amanita Dreamer, “It’s Terribly Mid-October Time”
A slug making a slow S on the way up the toe of an old boot, which rests with its mate on a carpet of redwood fronds in front of an old stump
The idea of absorbing the start of the day from Pa’s Chair, after a tiny patter of rain in the gloom, is what pulled me out of bed this morning. I didn’t think I’d feel like making a Phoenix flame (in my can-style campstove), but once I was up, it felt worth it for a hot cuppa or two, as well as for my morning oatmeal.
Next to a tangle of cords, a pale avocado-green mug of coffee with nested hearts drawn in the foam, beyond which is a little standee with the number 19 on it, by an empty yellow saucer that probably held something yummy
Then the sky brightened in the West-That-Feels-Like-East.
In a wide-open blue sky over dry grassy scrub hills with a couple of trees, an airplane’s thin streak of white like a shooting star over the small dark shape of a raven-size bird in flight
In that hallowed land, birds and cats exist in discordant harmony.
With ocean ethereally aglow in sunlight beyond the same type of landscape as in the previous photo, a small faded Bobcat excavator streaked with rust and parked tilted on a slope strewn with a few decaying pieces of drywall
The most active thing I did all day was hand-saw a couple of small fallen trees that might eventually have threatened the water line, in settling. Then I lay on the ground in a trickle of sunlight and napped.
After the nap came a shower. The big spider who had spun a web across the entrance was gone. I suspect someone ate her, which is convenient for me although I appreciated her presence.
The negative space of a spider’s silhouette like an arachnid ghost against pale tent-canvas
To more frolics
To home page
To contact
