Chapbook

[Doreen Peri]

Perfect. Beautiful! Can I please buy an autographed print copy? I’m serious

[sasha]

 
Jeez, I hardly know what to say. "Thank you!" comes to mind, but it seems so trite - a reflexive "bless you" following a sneeze, a one-size-fits-all lignuistic placeholder so automatic it's apt to become detached from sincerity...

Thank you, Doreen. I'm pleasurably astonished you've found these ramblings worthwhile. (There are a few more still on the workbench, and notes for others hidden away in computer folders - what some of us old-timers still occasionally call "directories".)

Yes, of course, if I had any idea how to make it happen, it would be an honor to scribble my signature across a flyleaf or whatever they call the blank opening page of a booklet. And for you, no charge. A complementary copy, perhaps. Just promise not to tell anyone I'm not a REAL writer, just an old math geek playing make-believe with different roles to see what fits & what doesn't.
 

[sasha]

 
The Lady of Russell Farm Road?

I'm not a believer in the paranormal. I used to be, and sometimes wish I still were; and have been known on occasion to surrender to YouTube clickbait on the subject; but by the time I was 15, I'd read enough about it to reluctantly conclude that the whiff of charlatanism overwhelmed the vast bulk of the the evidence, and what little remained untainted was inconclusive. It was also clear that professional stage magicians were a lot harder to fool than sincere but naive researchers.

Still...

I did a bit of urban exploration in my younger days, despite the scarcity of good sites nearby. Local real estate occupied by derelict buildings doesn't remain fallow for long, and opportunities tend to be ephemeral. I've beaten the demolition crews to a couple of old paper mills & scored a handful of photographically rewarding wanders; but crumbling old farmhouses outnumber the industrial ruins, and their usual location in residential areas makes discrete access problematic.

One day in the summer of 2007 I was exploring backroads where the Massachusetts towns of Gardner, Templeton, & Winchendon come together, and happened to pass such a house, an old 2-story Colonial rotting on a sizeable overgrown lot. It had apparently been undergoing renovation at the time of its abandonment. Construction debris lay scattered about, now nearly hidden beneath the encroaching greenery; remnants of a tattered blue tarp slowly waved in the breeze, revealing the weathered plywood siding it had been hung to protect. The windows had long been blown out, and the frames themselves were collapsing in on themselves. The property was set far enough back from the main thoroughfare that I felt I could park for a closer look without attracting undue attention - so I did.

Crickets trilled about me as I waded through the grass and mounted the granite slab below the entry; but one look inside convinced me this was only going to be a walkaround. What little was left of the floor promised a short, brutal trip to the basement 8 feet below should I be foolish enough to trust it with my weight. So after a longing look up the staircase to the upper level, I stepped off the slab and began my circumnavigation of the structure. The sill of the first window I passed was near enough the ground - barely - for me to peer inside.

A fireplace in the wall opposite - broken furniture strewn across the floor, graffiti declaring who sucked dick and what bands rocked. A sagging ceiling, and borne on the cool, dank air wafting from within, the inevitable odors of decay - moldering wood, chimney residue, and damp stone.

Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, these odors were overwhelmed by another - the unmistakable scent of a woman's perfume.

I could just make out the dismembered remains of an upholstered couch below the window, and stood on my tiptoes wondering if an open perfume bottle there might be the source, even if it didn't make sense - any such liquid should have evaporated long ago. But I couldn't get enough elevation to see anyway, so I moved around the corner to the adjacent wall, where another window overlooked the couch.

From this vantage I could clearly see it, but nothing laying upon it that might offer an explanation. The air drifting out this window was redolent of what one would expect of a ruined house - for a moment. Then I was again enveloped in the aroma of perfume.

I had the eerie feeling that someone - She - was following me.

Most curious, indeed.

I completed my circuit of the house without further incident, returned to my car, and on a roundabout trip back home, pondered the incident - if in fact there was one. I've returned there a few times, documenting the building's ultimate collapse. I once had a girlfriend who had a spooky way of knowing things, and brought her there once without telling her the backstory, curious if she'd pick up any vibes. She did not.

File under "Anomalous incident - unresolved".

[sasha]

Snowfall

Another 7 or 8" of snow fell overnight, and is still trickling down when I suit up after my first two coffees to assess the damage. Uncharacteristically (over the last few years anyway), the overnight temperature had remained well below freezing, so the snow is powder - light, fluffy, incohesive - lousy for making snowballs, a delight to shovel. Or at least not as backbreaking as the heavy, wet sticky stuff we get when temperatures hover around 32 F / 0 C. I neither dread nor begrudge cleanup after a fall of powder. I almost - almost, mind you - enjoy clearing away snow such as this. I get to indulge my anal-retentive craving for straight lines & right angles carving channels through it.

My plowman has yet to arrive, and probably won't for several hours yet - I'll leave the bulk of the work for him. I'll restrict my attention to exhuming the car and mailbox. On the eve of a snowstorm, I always tuck the car into a little pullout at the end if the driveway. It's out of his way, and near enough the road to minimize the amount of digging required should I really need to escape before he can get here.

I usually start by excavating a passage just wide enough for my car through the windrow the town plows leave blocking my driveway's exit, but today it looks like more work than I'm willing to do so early in the day; so I leave that for my plowman too, & trudge over to the mailbox. The mail carrier always approaches from the west, so I like providing a long, gradual access for him - much longer than some of my snow-blower toting neighbors do, but it pleases me to do so. Besides, I can use the exercise - this winter's been so goddamned cold I've only gotten out a few times over the past several weeks.

I'm not 30 anymore - hell, I'm not even 70 anymore - so the trick to this job is Slow & Easy. One bite at a time. Early in the season, it's easy enough to toss each shovelful atop an ever-increasing mound right where you stand, but by now it's grown so tall that most of it comes tumbling back down into where it's just been quarried. So each load is carried, one by one, across the road and dropped at its edge. It's not as tedious as it sounds - the road is a narrow, unpaved country lane barely 2 cars wide, and only sparsely traveled, especially this time on a Sunday morn, and especially especially this particular Sunday, when a well-hyped athletic event calls to its fans to prepare guac, wings, and beverage for the contest to come. And it's quiet enough that the occasional pickup driving past announces itself audibly long before I can see it.

In fact, from the west, here comes Old Carl. I can tell it's him because Old Carl is well-known hereabouts as The World's Slowest Driver, and I have no problem retreating into the notch I've carved into the snowbank to let him pass. But instead of trundling by, he slows even more, and I can see his passenger side window rolling down. Old Carl is stopping to chat.

"Mornin'!" I call.

"Morniin'," he answers. "Ya wanna come down, shovel my driveway too?" he asks.

"I dunno," I say. "Maybe next time. How you doin'?"

"Not too bad, for an old man. At least it ain't ice, this time."

"Amen to that," I say. "Seems like we don't get snow like this anymore."

"Yuh. Gettin' a reg'lar old fashioned winter this time." This segues into "Seems like some folks around here have forgotten how to drive in it proper."

"Well, as long as they stay home today for the game, we should be safe."

He seems not quite to get my drift, but the rules of engagement don't require him to, only to concur in a congenial fashion: "Yuh, yuh. Damn fools outta stay off the road."

"Keepin' it safe for us old timers." I look down and chop the edge of the shovel on the road a few times to dislodge some snow clinging to the blade.

"Yassuh," he agrees, and gives the Benediction. "Guess I'd better let you get back to it. We don't move as fast as we used to, do we?"

"No we don't. It's enough for me just to keep movin' at all."

"You got that right," he says. The car edges forward. "You take it easy."

"You too," I say, and step back as he pulls away. Before he's out of sight, I've returned to the task at hand and taken another bite out of the snowbank.

As I ferry it across the road, I'm struck by the ceremonial nature of our pas de deux. No information was exchanged, yet it served a purpose. It reminded me of how two ants meeting in a burrow might engage in a similar ritual, brushing their antennae across one another's face to acknowledge that although strangers, they are tribemates. We belong to the same club, that of the Old Men. We live similar solo lives out here in the woods - he widowed, me bachelored - with little else in common, but in some fashion, we are Kin. And so we talk the talk and dance the dance as we pass one another in our service to whatever Queen rules our colony. The words themselves revealed nothing - they were content-free and meaningless. And yet I felt a mild glow of contentment at their conclusion. I hope he did too. Fare well, Old Carl.

[saw]

I kinda like the fact
that not everything has a rock solid explanation
and I'm more than ok with fantasy
fantasy, dreams are a way to heal the brutality of living
at times...the things we see, or read about and go wow
to feel the full brunt of all that would too much to absorb
whether paranormal or simply odd, I'm glad with have outlets,
places to travel...the unexplaied roads, the abandoned houses
the distractions from the tangible

[saw]

I relish chance conversations
in the grocery store, pumping gas
on the trail

[sasha]

I kinda like the fact
that not everything has a rock solid explanation
...

This is what lured me to a career in the sciences - the fact that there's so much we don't have a solid explanation for - that, and the thrill of the hunt, of peeking under the hood and finally seeing just how something previously mysterious actually works. I guess it's the promise that such explanations are there, provided we know where & how to look. The sun rises each morning in the east, marches across the sky, and disappears over the horizon in the west. It was a thousand years before we realized it's because we're watching it all from the surface of a spinning ball. (Some still resist the idea.) Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is the likeliest.

A woman's perfume - some kind of mold? some quirk of organic chemistry? or... something else?

I'd be ok with some kind of paranormal explanation provided I could repeat the experience, maybe find a pattern of circumstances leading up to it... but a one-time occurrence is just that - a single page torn from a book, a partial entry from someone's diary, or an out-of-focus photograph... something inexplicable that once happened to me. Kinda cool, kinda frustrating. I want to know - but I guess I have to accept that maybe there are some things Unknowable. Dark energy? The nature of Time? Whence the Big Bang? Are we alone? Sheesh.

[sasha]

I relish chance conversations
in the grocery store, pumping gas
on the trail

Something very human about them - assurance that underneath, we're all pretty much the same - and as long as we' cheerfully accept that, there are no Strangers, only fellow people we haven't had the opportunity to know.

[winddance]

if not for
the phantasies and phantoms
this world would be
unendurable
dull and one dimensional
they live in hearts
and inhabit dreams
returning to the places
they once walked
their pain, joy
and scents
linger

[sasha]

I Remember My 1st Pair of Glasses

our senses
only show us what was essential
to primeval survival -
our noses were meant to detect
what might be good to eat
and what might be toxic...
our eyes to see only those colors
our atmosphere allows in -
a tiny island of hues
poking up from a vast sea of them
mostly invisible to us...
likewise our ears adapted
to feel ripples coursing through the air
such as made by fleeing dinner,
or beasts with similar plans for us...

with such narrow gunslits to observe our world
it should come as no surprise that
our understanding of Reality was limited
by what these primitive tools could provide...
and so the need to understand
drove us, small naked primates in a land of giants,
to create mythologies
explaining what our senses could not.

now we craft instruments -
eyeglasses allowing us to glimpse
beyond the veil of our blindnesses...
glimpses revealing a world
so unlike the one
into which we thought we evolved
that we create new mythologies -
placeholder explanations for the unexplainable
provisional answers to questions
awaiting discovery of
enough missing puzzle pieces
to synthesize an even better one.
and as surely as the old truths have become fables
so shall the new truths have to yield
to newer truer truths...

[sasha]

 
Dream Voyage
.

.
...the mute anonymity of motel rooms... the same furnishings: king-sized bed with too many pillows - the same desk beside the same credenza with tv & mini-fridge... in the bathroom, the same assortment of toiletries I'll never use.



This one boasted not only a two-man settee, but a stunning view of the roof and ventilation system...
.

.
.

.
.

.



A quiet place off the lobby to read or write, while nursing a paper cup of the 24/7 free coffee...
.

.


...a mysterious portal to ... where? (Darkly secretive command center?)
.

.


The storm is over, the power held. Time to go home.
.

.


Hello, Rock. You rock.
.

.
views of Scott Brook...
.

.
.

.
.

.

[sasha]

Now It Goes to 11

After months of pop-ups warning of Windows 10's ultimate discontinuation, I finally surrendered & upgraded to Win 11. I'd been planning to wait until fall, when support for 10 will cease, but I was busy anyway preparing breakfast, and the transition from 7 to 10 had gone smoothly enough, so I thought "why not now". Downloading & installation took maybe 20-30 minutes, and was completely lacking in drama. When the computer restarted, it ran my Good Morning batch file as always, loaded my wallpaper, and all my desktop icons were in their proper locations, looking only slightly different from 10's rendering of them. The only gripe I have (so far) is that the task bar has migrated from the top of the screen to the bottom - and a quick web search has revealed there is no way to move it. So, like moving a piece of furniture that's always been THERE, it's now over HERE, where I'll be bumping my shin on it in the dark for the next N months until I can retrain my muscle memory. Change for its own sake. Why, Microsoft?

[sasha]

Opening Day

Yesterday was the first day of Mud Season.

Well - there isn't really an official First Day - not like Deer Season, School, or Spring Training - more like in the Native tradition of a tribal elder looking to the sky, pondering the signs, and declaring it so. And, as the eldest in my household of One, I declare it so.

Mud season began yesterday.

The weather has kept me housebound for weeks. When it hasn't been too cold to venture outside for any length of time, it's been too wet. Yesterday the thermometer not only edged above freezing, but flirted with the 40-degree mark (or 3-4 degrees, for those of you employing more sensible units of measure). So I thought I'd take an ennui pill and go for a walk. After a bit of thought as to where, I decided a stroll to the state line from my front door would do just fine. Pulled on my boots, then had to decide whether or not I needed ice cleats. The driveway was pretty treacherous, but where the hardpack has melted, the road is either still frozen solid or starting to thaw. Was it harder on the cleats to walk on stone, or through an abrasive slurry? They were several seasons old, and I already have a replacement set awaiting duty - so on they went, along with my 2nd heaviest overcoat & brand-new gloves. Grabbed the keys & the camera, & headed out.

As it turned out, the cleats were only of use between the house and the road. I was glad to have them on, but also glad I'd left the virgin set behind. There were enough slushy remnants of hardpack to spare them from the worst of the abuse, but a few open stretches where there was no avoiding the mud.

What a glorious day! And though the air was still cold, it didn't have the vicious bite of past weeks - and where the sun managed to find its way through the trees, it carried the unmistakable warmth of spring. March is notorious for luring us into thinking Winter might be over, then delivering a sucker punch in the form of 8-12" wet, heavy, power-line-downing, heart-attack-inducing snow... but it can be so beguiling, seducing us into imagining that maybe, just maybe, we're within sight of the finish. This was such a day. I allowed myself the luxury of pretending that it just might be what it appeared to be.

I trudged downhill to the marshy fen where the state of NH becomes the state of MA a little over a mile from home. From here the road climbs upward, through a newly-minted wildlife management area I've only begun to explore. But for the knee-deep snow, I might have left the road to wander the woods. I was content instead to keep to the track. Here the water is no longer a quiet, introverted meander, but a noisy little brook tumbling over rocks and through the remnants of an old mill. I recalled how Kane (my dog) had loved to run free along its banks on our walks here, and wondered again whatever had become of him.

Then the road winds through deep woods, passing a recently-cleared section where last summer a severe thunderstorm knocked down so many trees I assumed a tornado had touched down, despite the NWS assertion that it was "only" a downburst. Here the brook has again become a marsh, a broad one, and by the end of the 2nd mile the road crosses it along a causeway, at whose southern end a small settlement has sprouted. This is where Kane and I would double back, a habit I've never bothered to break. I basked for a moment in the sun before starting my return trip back up into the hills. By the end of the 3rd mile I was starting to feel the exertion - and a smug delight that I could still do it.

For all of its unpleasantness, this has been atypical of recent winters - few of the cyclones spiralling northward up the eastern seaboard, more of the so-called Alberta clippers roaring in from the west, bringing brief but intense lake-effect storms from the Great Lakes. Despite knowing better, I really want to believe the worst is behind us.

But I'm not standing down until I hear the wood frogs.

[winddance]

quack, quack

[sasha]

Oh, I love that sound, but it's not due to arrive for at least another month - though in the past I have seen them hopping across snow fields to get to the vernal pool next door.