Good Morning!
We were ready to go at dawn, though some of us were still asleep. Frankly, most of us were still asleep. Still, we were ready to go at dawn.
One faction said we should attack at the drawbridge with one overpowering force. Another faction thought to divide the army in three, and attack all three gates. Everyone else--99% of us--were indifferent and brushing our teeth.
We didn't know what was beyond the drawbridge, but we wanted dearly to get in there. We'd heard tales, tales from some of ourselves, about the riches therein. In fact, we even had maps of many of their major shopping malls. However, we still didn't know what to expect.
We scouted en masse. At the drawbridge we hallooed. A young girl sitting nearby we questioned. She said the drawbridge would be lowering in five minutes, and lo, it lowered in five minutes. Our scouting thus included the interior, which increased our odds of victory when we finally stormed the drawbridge.
We stormed the drawbridge next morning. We bashed through it, killing everyone we came across. We burned down all their buildings once we'd looted them. We shouted: "Nobody loves a pacifist!"
*
Christmas Time
Traditionally, we usually waited till mid-afternoon to go to the prison, but that one year when I was twelve years old we had to go early because we'd gotten a letter saying we had cousins coming and we had no way to tell them we'd be visiting mom.
Prisons are pretty busy places during the big holidays, as you can well imagine. There's plenty of people who make a day of it, but since mom had already been in prison a decade and she wasn't due for parole for another fifteen years we didn't make much of a deal of it. We met up with her in the visitors' hall; she was happy to see us; she fussed over my brother a bit more than over me but that was because he was the baby, born in the prison itself.
We'd give her a couple cartons of smokes as we did every year, then we left the prison and wended out way back to the house to await these cousins of ours. They knew all about our odd situation, of course, but they never drew attention to it. Mom was in prison, and that's the way it was.
*
Asleep, Awake
Judy fell asleep one day right in the middle of a corporate meeting. Her head fell briefly onto her chest. (Not a thrilling meeting, to be sure.) She looked up again, at the others in the room, and yet she was still asleep. Someone said to her: "Missed some sleep last night?" and Judy replied: "I'm asleep right now, thank you very much."
She went back to her desk and filed some accounts. She thought it was strange to be asleep at the same time.
That evening at dinner, she explained: "I'm asleep, you see. I don't know if I'll ever wake up. I'm not at all here."
Time went on. Judy slept though days and weeks and years. Nothing ever woke her up, but, then again, nothing ever had to wake her up. She was happily asleep. People make quips about it, but they didn't bother her at all.
In the end, she got a world record for being asleep, asleep for fifty years. At her banquet, she thanked all who helped her by not waking her up. "Thank you for not having anything interesting to say; something interesting would have awakened me. My sleep was undisturbed."
*
Yo Superman
A call came in. The voice told me a cat was stuck in a tree. I rushed over to such-and-such an address, and rescued the cat.
A horn honked at me. I crossed the street to get to the car that was making a lot of noise. The muffler. I fixed it.
The driver had her radio on. A political problem, a dispute over territory, a dynastic divide. I went to the senates in question and repaired matters.
A servant in one of them told me about his personal problem. I gave him some Brief Counselling. He later let me know his problem was solved.
After he'd rang off, there was another call. Another cat was stuck in a tree. I rescued the cat, and the family was grateful.
However, their washing machine was on the fritz. A few runs of the wrench and it was as good as new.
It was time for lunch. There was a problem with their etouffee. I explained southern spices, and the meals became successes.
Out on the high street a stopped an argument, and I stopped it through pure reason.
I was tired, but I ignored it. The feeling went away.
*
The Bish
In the autumn, a Bishop's fancy turns to the future, which will be coming, from the Bishop's perspective, in the springtime, and that's when the whole thing starts all over again.
The bish sees it like that, too, even though he's anything like a Bishop. The bish swims cold-blooded in the lakes to soon ice over, and in the air he goes high, to the coldest parts he can stand, warm-blooded. He knows change will come, and it's only a matter of months.
He wonders where he should lay his eggs some months to come: they could be in an upriver stream or an uptree limb. The bish knows it's not under his control: it's a matter for time to decide, some moons away.
He sees the change of the seasons, and, like the Bishop, has hopes for the turns of blesses and curses. He would be incapable of thinking otherwise, so ingrained is it in the bish's soul that whatever misery's still to come, the other will emerge from its shell, like a new bish, almost.
Both the Bishop and the bish know about the foliation and its contraries. Here it comes again. Here it comes again.
*
Our Alien
My hussy Jean didn't put two-and-two together properly when I told her I thought the key to the grisly murders we'd been seeing in our hamlet must have something to do with the arrival on our street of the Man from Mars some two years past, reasoning (so I did) that the booming sky-voices that crossed across our village every noon, and which (according to reports on the radio) swept over the planet every other of the noons of the world, could be a signal of some sort directed to our neighbour the Martian. My hussy Jean nearly laughed out loud at my entirely reasonable conjecture, and proceeded to inform me that his vitals could not allow him to commit grisly acts, such was his physiology, and that though the signals we heard every noon were indeed intended for our Martian and for him alone (being as they were warrants for his arrest on tissue-thin Martian criminal charges relating to a revenue abnormality that had been witnessed via his Martian Social Credit score), he had reassured her laughing loud there was nothing to the charges the court had pronounced. That was the last time I spoke to her.
*
In Cobourg
On Saturday, in the early afternoon, we were walking down a street called College Street. We'd checked out Victoria Hall the previous day, and we had the idea of going to a Spanish music concert there the following evening. That would mean hanging around for five or six hours.
At the bottom of College Street is where Victoria Park begins. Yes: Victoria Hall, Victoria Park, and Victoria College, all within easy walking distance. Cobourg did favour Victoria!
Sunday was the day we had to come home, by train. We'd taken the train to Cobourg on Friday afternoon. Now it was Saturday, and we were at the north edge of Victoria Park, and crossing it, to see what the beach was all about.
There was a bandshell ahead of us. This was the off-season, so nothing was going on there.
I looked down to the lake, thought it looked pretty, and thought of photographing it. Then I recalled, all at once, like I was sleepwalking, that I hadn't thought of bringing a camera with me. I hadn't thought of keeping another travel sequence. I suppose that means the year is truly at the end.
So here's a representative photograph.
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