 * * * For the record, these next four photo art posts from Project Firebird I REALLY like! There’s always a period of experimentation in trying to determine just exactly how to work with captures from a particular subject in a particular setting (let alone how to shoot it in the first place). Same goes for determining just how far to go with that subject. Could be a contributing reason it’s taken me so long to establish automotive art as a component of my portfolio, regardless of how much I enjoy it, is that the settings in which automobiles are captured are so vastly different, with infinite uncontrollable lighting conditions and vast amounts of ‘noise’ surrounding them. Of course, as I’ve written before, one of the elements that make photo art ‘art’ is how far the artist decides to take a particular capture into the abstract. But when I figure that part out, oh the joy! * * * BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such … * * * ... previous verse ... click to follow the link ... Chapter One - The Invention Of The Banana Daiquiri Chapter Two A Fine Tune So the two friends staggered off the beach, drunk. They’d exhausted the bananas and chipped the ice block away to nothing and were back the quarter mile or so to the house to clean up before dinner. Lincoln loved these moments when Jefferson would drop the ‘sir’ nonsense and call him by his first name – had to be mostly drunk before he’d do it. Some people perceived Jefferson as his servant; Lincoln knew he was more accurately assigned his protector. It was Jefferson who had identified the island and Jefferson who had gotten him there and kept him supplied and solvent and Jefferson who maintained his incognito. They were friends, and he had told Jefferson that, and Jefferson had winked at him, whispered ‘I know’, then said with greater volume for the benefit of any who might overhear, “Yes, sir, that we are.” As the sun dropped to just a finger’s width above the Caribbean Sea they made their way up the hill to Eddie’s big house that was surrounded and shaded by flamboyant trees with their red leaves. Its wrap-around porch overlooked Admiralty Bay, dotted with its many small boats as well as Eddie’s large yacht and Jefferson’s much smaller schooner. Port Elizabeth itself was also in view, then eleven miles past Rocky Bay and Northwest Point the looming dark green of St. Vincent itself. Eddie was there on the porch with glass in hand and waved, “Moses!”, calling Jefferson by his first name, “And Link!” calling Lincoln by his fake first name, “My very good friends! Already been happily imbibing, I see!” They immediately called for the necessary ingredients and introduced Eddie to their new rum with chipped ice and bananas trick. They went quickly through two rounds of the beverage before Jefferson remembered to ask, “Have you strawberries this trip?” As it happened, Eddie did, and called for a small bowl of them. It arrived cradled in the soft hands of a young woman whose appearance caused Lincoln to gasp. Her dark, riveting eyes framed by her deep brunette hair put Lincoln in mind of a panther studying its prey. She wore a light, cream colored dress that slightly tousled as a breeze passed through the doorway where she’d paused, just a hint of a smile on her deeply red lips as though she wanted the guests to have a good look at her before she joined them. All three men, having ceased conversation, looked at her appreciatively, but it was Lincoln who felt a jolt. “Gentlemen,” Eddie announced proudly, “May I present to you to Miss Jennie Jerome, late of the Isle of Wight. Miss Jerome, I give you Captain Moses Jefferson of the schooner Liberty and Colonel Link Douglas, retired.” Miss Jerome allowed her smile to broaden slightly at the men, then stepped onto the porch and placed the bowl of strawberries on the table. “There are precious few of these,” she said of the strawberries, her voice strong and assertive, “But they will wither quickly in this heat, so I suggest we eat them up. I’ve asked the staff to prepare strawberry shortcake with much of the remainder.” She examined the other ingredients on the table, noting the little pool of water forming around the small block of ice. “What sort of a concoction have you going here?” she asked. Eddie chuckled and picked up the ice chipper. “Allow me to demonstrate,” he said. Jefferson, who always seemed more loquacious in the company of women, said, “We’ll use the strawberries instead of the bananas this round, see how that does.” Miss Jerome nodded and watched Eddie chip at the block, scrapping up bits of ice to dump into glasses as he went, but her eyes seemed to fall on Lincoln or at least Lincoln perceived that they had. He was immediately concerned that his appearance was too unkempt. He’d allowed his beard to fill in completely and his hair to grow long, both to cover the scars of his his head wound and conceal his identity. Each had greyed considerably; mostly, in fact. But were he not unkept enough, had his appearance not sufficiently departed from his former appearance, might she recognize him? On this entire island only Jefferson and Eddie and probably a couple of Jefferson’s crew (though he also had concerns about his housekeeper) knew who he was, and Jefferson thought that might be too much. The way her dark eyes seemed to pierce him he feared she might have known right off. “A colonel,” she asked, “What are you retired from?” Lincoln’s mouth began what would have come out as little more than a stammer, but Jefferson quickly interjected, “This here is a veteran of our civil war, wounded at Gettysburg,” he said. Finding a very slight voice, Lincoln said, “My long and scruffy hair is my attempt to hide the scars. I hope it does not offend you.” Her expression changed, Lincoln thought to one of empathy. “Of course not,” she seemed to protest. “It was a fearsome war, that battle especially. I saw lines of men wounded much worse as they were brought to New York.” “As you can tell by her accent,” Eddie explained, “Miss Jerome is not British, but an American. Born to a financier in Brooklyn.” “My father, though quite a successful speculator, was something of a cad,” Miss Jerome said. “My mother evacuated my sisters and I, first to Paris and then to Britain.” “Where there is no shortage of aristocrats seeking excitement through marriage to a spirited American woman,” Eddie intoned. “Yes,” she said and looked at Eddie. “But they must run from their mamas first.” Eddie seemed flustered by that; even seemed to blush. Jefferson caught it immediately and knew exactly the implication. Lincoln, Jefferson knew, could not see past his infatuation with the woman. But Jefferson knew much, much more about Eddie and his family issues than Lincoln did. Eddie collected himself. “It will be beef tonight, gentlemen, still reasonably fresh.” Several more rounds of the rum concoction were drained before dinner was called, though Miss Jerome nursed just a single glass. The strawberries quickly disappeared. None could decide if they preferred it with strawberries or bananas, but it was Miss Jerome, recognizing the strawberries would not be replenished for some time, who declared, “Clearly the bananas make the better drink, you sods”. She, of course, had not tried it with bananas. They moved to the interior around a large, heavy table crowded with beef Wellington, asparagus in hollandaise sauce, roasted beets and parsnips, sweet potatoes, Brussel sprouts with chestnuts and bacon, a red wine jus, and Yorkshire pudding. A staff of four, who seemed to transition between cooks and servers and butlers, traveled with Eddie served the fare and struggled to keep everyone’s glass filled with a strong red wine. They conversed long into the night about events in Britain and the Continent, about Jamaica and the British dominions of the Caribbean that Eddie had visited on his most recent circuit, about the happenings on Bequia and St. Vincent that had occurred in his absence. “My presence was noted, just as I’d intended,” Eddie said. “Then I touched Canada, made a show, and on a misty night disappeared once more. Slipped from the gaze of the British Empire to our little gem here in the warm blue sea, our island in the clouds, Where Blackbeard once ruled. Where Sir Francis Drake planned his attacks upon the Spanish. Where Henry Morgan dodged hurricanes ‘twixt pirating himself a fortune. And now where we poor loners conceal ourselves from, no, dare I say from where we reject what reality would be forced upon us!” Miss Jerome placed a hand on Eddie’s and leaned affectionately against him, happily bemused, filled his wine glass with her other hand. “She’ll never find us here, will she, Rosebud?” The dishes cleared away, the strawberry shortcake, prepared according to Miss Jerome’s recipe, consumed and its leftovers abandoned, the men adjourned back to the porch and lit fat cigars. A blue haze built around them as they ruminated into the quiet, sweet night. Lincoln remaining very subdued, or at least subdued for him, his mind apparently preoccupied. Jefferson too had quieted, something he especially did after sensing he’d been talking too much, which, affected by the presence of a lady, he often did. Eddie did most of the talking, vacillating between pontification and lamentation. Miss Jerome moved further into the house, to the parlor, where Eddie had imported an upright piano. She was classically trained in the instrument by a friend and student of Chopin, but to her family’s disappointed had rejected the level of work and commitment that would have been necessary to achieve the concert status they felt she was capable of. Such seriousness of intent interested her not at all. She enjoyed, at all things, playing well, so long as it was just play. She looked through the sheet music present, but finally decided to let memory and mood direct her fingers. Lincoln heard the first notes nonchalantly, but as they came together with grace and melody his attention sharpened. He looked to Eddie, wondering if he’d added a pianist to his staff. Eddie said, “It’s Miss Jerome. She’s a wonderful player.” Lincoln looked over his shoulder, back into the house. “She wouldn’t mind at all if you joined her; likely be flattered, in fact.” Then sensing that Lincoln was almost looking to him for permission, said, “Go on, my friend. She’s her own woman.” Lincoln nodded, laid his smoldering cigar on the porch railing, and moved inside. Now Jefferson was looking to Eddie as if to confirm that, indeed, Lincoln would be alright. Eddie said, “She’s a remarkable woman, truly, but I do not deceive you when I say she is her own woman and, aside from the obvious dalliance I’ve enjoyed, I have no claims, and she’s accepted the claims of no one, though there’s one gentleman in particular who’d like to believe she has.” Then he added, “Can you imagine mother’s reactions if I did? An American? Bloody hell!” Jefferson nodded. Lincoln had enjoyed the occasional dalliance himself but never more than a brief tryst; what he called ‘a sporting woman’. He also sensed how lonely Lincoln was and worried about that. Worried he’d go too far with someone, reveal too much of himself, just to feel close to someone. Eddie was still on his own problems. “Jefferson, I talk of hiding and rejecting the world and its crushing responsibilities, but I only deceive myself. I want no more part of what the world will have of me than our friend does. I can’t hide forever from the entire British Navy. I suspect your friend can’t either.” Jefferson looked at him suspiciously, warily. He’d intended to leave the island long enough to collect supplies and, most importantly, finances, as Eddie was there now. But Eddie shrugged and shook his head, flicked the ash off the edge of his cigar into the night, said, “I’m sorry. Truly,” and brought his eyes back to Jefferson’s. “We will watch over your friend. Our friend. There is a duty here. You have my word.” Back inside, Lincoln took up a seat next to the piano; indeed, Miss Jerome seemed most pleased with the attention. “This is so beautiful,” he told her. She smiled at that, asked, “Do you have a favorite song?” He said, “You know, I have always thought ‘Dixie’ a fine tune.” She looked over to him from the top of her eye sockets, smirking. “Oh, really?” He nodded and smiled and looked away to his hands in his lap, her gaze just so piecing he felt to look back into them was too intimate. She turned back to her keyboard, did not take up ‘Dixie’, not yet. “I like your eyes. They’re very reassuring. I’d even describe them as soothing.” He looked back to her, now that she had looked away, pleased. She added without turning towards him, “I’d even call them familiar.” He said nothing. Sat holding his breath. “So, Mr. Douglas,” she said, “How is it you have come to be here?” - CH
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 Back on Project Firebird ... ... new prose is coming, I swear! -CH  * * * BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such … * * * Chapter One The Invention Of The Banana Daiquiri “Anesthetized”, Lincoln spoke to himself just above a whisper, hardly audible above the sound of the sea breeze rustling the leaves of the palm trees between which his hammock rocked. The sea breeze and the sound of a gentle surf caressing this smooth beach. “Anesthetized” he repeated more softly as he rocked towards the nap he craved. Needed, really, because sleep so constantly eluded him. As drowsiness climbed like the rising tide his last conscious thoughts of his friend Eddie became the first strands of dream. “Humans”, his new friend Eddie had pontificated, “Having been anesthetized by a morphine drip of peace, lurch spasmodic when drenched in withdrawals of war.” Lincoln knew the ‘war’ to which he referred was big war, total war, war unconcerned by a few measly extra thousand deaths here or there or some silly nonsense over ‘collateral damage’ which might involve, oh, maybe several thousand insignificant civilian deaths. Not a scuffle that brought a few dozen families to grief, a few thousand humans scarred physically and emotionally, a scuffle in which society for the most part danced blissfully unawares, numbly forgetful. No. Total war. Annihilation. Entire populations - soldiers, civilians, men, women, children, pets, and houseplants - wiped clean from existence with extreme prejudice. No dancing and no possibility anyone left alive would ever forget. Lincoln dreamed and heard Sherman say, “War is Hell”, and “The more terrible it is the better because it reminds us why it is worth avoiding in the first place.” And Lincoln believed that. Had no doubts about that. Had grown fond of the scrappy little redhead that time him and Grant and he killed a couple bottles of whiskey up in the residence against Mary Todd’s shrieking objections. Lincoln knew from endless hospital visits, from trips to battlefields after the fact, from the ghastly photographs his son fixated over, he believed he knew how horrible total war was. But Lincoln was still not prepared for what he saw when he went through the fallen Petersburg defenses to Richmond in April 1865. What Lincoln saw now, now half-dreaming, now half-awake in the hammock by the sea, was a series of bloated, mangled corpses floating in the mud like so much flotsam, bloated corpses with astonished faces if one remained at all, faces with huge, round open mouths and bloated lips, bloated cheeks, bloated eye sockets empty of human life but saturated with human pain, corpse after corpse after corpse in a soup of mud and garnished with pieces of flesh, appendages, arms, legs, bare feet, skulls, torsos. Then once past, the dessert that appeared out of the rubble of Richmond, the living skeletons so happy to see him, to touch the cuff of his pants, the hem of his coat, to let their calloused fingers reverently stroke the top of his mud speckled boots. So happy to see him and crying with gratefulness as though God herself had descended among them. Starving, emaciated creatures who credited him with their freedom. No, Lincoln had not been ready for that. Not ready at all. “You had been anesthetized by peace”, Eddie had told him, “And now you lurch spasmodic”. “Anesthetized”, Lincoln repeated, now fully awake once more, unable to sleep through the memories that engulfed him. “Yes, I need more of that”. And sure enough, there was his friend Jefferson holding a mug. “British grog, sir”? “I recon so”, Lincoln said, “And will you please stop ‘siring’ me”? “Yessir,” Jefferson said. Grog. The British Navy issue of four parts water to one part rum. Eddie had just returned in his yacht, anchored now in the Admiralty Bay, with fresh casks of Jamaican rum. Jefferson had sweetened it with sugar and lime juice. Lincoln took a gulp. “Why,” he commented, “It’s surprisingly cool, Jefferson!” “Indeed, sir” Jefferson told him, “Prince Edward has returned through Canadian ports with a treasure in blocks of ice, a piece of which now rests in yonder hut.” Lincoln smiled. Trust ol’ Eddie. Likely there were additional luxuries on board which would emerge later, not the least of which would be the whiskey he craved. Jefferson leaned closer to him and whispered, “A lady accompanies him, sir.” Lincoln smiled at that, too. “Anything to eat about?” “All I have presently are a few bananas,” he said. “Help me to one,” he asked and held his arm out. Jefferson helped him swing out of the hammock and they walked barefoot to the hut and the table in the shade outside, the sand squishing between their toes. The hut served only as convenience for Lincoln’s daily excursions to the beach. He had a much larger house a fair piece back in the Bequia hills, near an even larger one Eddie had secured for himself. Lincoln sat in a chair at the table, pulled a banana off its bunch and peeled the skin back. “Have you seen Eddie about?” “The Prince and his lady passed by this way earlier,” he said, “And left rum and the ice I bespoke of. He sends his salutations and invites us to dinner at his abode this evening.” “He hates it when you call him ‘Prince’, Lincoln reminded him. “You hate it when I call you ‘sir’.” “Yes, but he is, after all, a real prince,” Lincoln said, “And he actually gets what he wants.” Jefferson said, “Yessir.” Lincoln took a nibble from the banana, then another gulp of the grog. The flavors of both mingled over his tongue. He had a thought. He sipped the grog again; its coolness had already begun to wane in the warm Caribbean air. “How much ice did Eddie leave us?” he asked. “Not a lot,” he said, “And it will melt quickly.” “We shouldn’t let it go to waste then, should we?” “No, sir, we should not.” Lincoln drained the grog. “Tell you what – take this mug, get one for yourself, and chip off enough ice to fill each about three-quarters full, okay?” Jefferson’s eyes twinkled. “Okay, sir.” He loved it when Lincoln got ideas. He disappeared into the hut, Lincoln heard the distinctive sounds of metal whacking against frozen water, then emerged again with both mugs and placed them before Lincoln. “Back with the rest,” he said and returned to the hut. Lincoln broke the rest of the banana in half, then crumpled each half into chunks and dropped them onto the ice in both mugs. Jefferson returned with limes, a bag of sugar, and a carafe of rum. He seemed to know what Lincoln had in mind. He halved, then quartered each lime. Lincoln shook out sugar over the banana in each mug, then squeezed the lime quarters into them. Finally he poured rum over it all and swiftly stirred both with a spoon. They sipped and smiles broke out across both faces. “Oh, my!” Jefferson said as Lincoln allowed himself a sense of satisfaction, the deep lines of his face which emerged with each troubled dream, softening a piece. “We’ll have to share this with Eddie before all the ice melts,” Lincoln said, thought a moment and added, “I wonder if he thought to bring Strawberries?” “I shall certainly make inquires, sir.” Both men happily drank again. Lincoln said, causing Jefferson to look away because he was always uncomfortable when Lincoln brought up past associations, “I should send this recipe to Seward.” Contact in any way, shape, or form with his friend, and conspirator, Secretary of State William Seward, was forbidden. - CH  * * * This past Spring I posted a series of photo art works derived from a Shelby car show, noting that automotive art, while being something that I truly enjoy and relate to, has not seemed terribly popular. But I wanted to do it anyway. More recently, I was approached by a good friend on something of a commission, and BTW commissions for artists are like mana from heaven. And guess what the request is for. Yep. Automotive art. Funny how that goes. So for the next couple weeks I’ll be posting some of the works produced for that commission. They will run the gamut between full on abstract and near faithful realism (note the ‘near’ qualification) and hopefully demonstrate the range of expression possible from what I believe is the most underestimated art form of all: The Automobile. - CH  Full title of this work is actually ‘Woman In A Blue Dress Lounging On A Red Leather Couch’. So it’s not that I’ve been lazy of late – it’s been more than 10 days since I posted and that one included no prose (neither does this one) – it’s more like a deep breath. An essential stretch of laziness. Between the photo art, the art projects, the prose and now the digital art, then add life onto it, that lovely creative mellow was turning into a knock down race from thing to thing to thing and curses to anyone or anything getting in the way. That’s not the way I want things done, sir. So I’ve spent the past few days deliberately NOT chasing self-imposed deadlines if something else needed my attention, or if I just didn’t feel like it. We lost one of our beloved puppies about a month ago – not sure how much that contributed to my mood. That one’s been a tough loss to take. If it matters, during this stretch I finished a major photo art project, which I’ll get into shortly, and initiated a new prose initiative, also soon to meet the light of day. So stuff is coming. Coming as I get around to it. As it happens, laziness now and then is part of the process. - CH  * * * BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such … * * * … previous verses … Scheduled Sleep Mode * * * Lavender Heavens Everybody – what everybody there was, anyhow – turned out for the fourth landing as it was likely to be interesting. Corporal Max, now General Max due to the way it’d all shaken out, was right there at the front of the observation line. He was wearing his heavy, light blue environmental suit with recirculating oxygen and his visor was on the polarized telephoto setting as he scanned the lavender heavens for the oncoming spacecraft. The rest of the five-member council was right there with him, similarly attired. All of them had been on that first vidette. All of them had been non-coms. And all of them were now generals. That first vidette had followed decades after probes identified the planet as a New Earth with a nearly identical atmosphere, mass, gravity, and magnetosphere. The planet was 28 light years from earth; each flight would take 63 years to arrive. The vidette contained 100 rangers in stasis, a few robots with the materials to construct robot printers and incubators, plus a small robot lander that would construct a proper landing field for the larger ship. It successfully entered orbit around the planet, then begin waking the rangers who would direct the initial operations, preparing the world for the huge colony vessels to follow at yearly intervals. Eighty-two of those 100 rangers had died in stasis. Only two of the surviving 18 were officers, neither of them over the rank of captain. So far as they could tell, within each stasis tube various feeding and medical ports and conduits had become detached from their occupants during flight. A message was sent back to Earth to that effect, but it would take 30 years before it arrived, and as the vidette had been 63 years in flight, every one of the half dozen supply and colony ships to follow at yearly intervals had already launched with the same stasis tube design flaw. A proper colony site was identified, the robot lander established a landing field, the vidette successfully landed. Infrastructure operations were mostly automated, so the few survivors were still able to direct the robots accordingly; 18 survivors at first, then 17, then 16, then 15 and so on, because the planet was covered by an unexpected new bacterial life humans had no immunity from. Plus, turned out this sun, a slightly different class from Earth’s, produced a heretofore unknown harmful radiation not filtered out by the planet’s magnetosphere. There were 12 survivors left by the time the supply ship arrived, by which point they’d learned to wear environmental suits and filter the atmosphere. Each spacecraft was designed to be completely disassembled. The raw materials for the new colony, including housing, were taken from the ships themselves. The spidery robots, more and more of them, successfully accomplished the task, disassembling each before the next arrived, reassembling some of it as housing and stacking the rest of it as raw materials for the 3D factories and robot printers. The first colony ship arrived with 1,000 settlers, mostly medical personnel and technicians. Eight-hundred-and-twelve of those settlers arrived as corpses. The second colony ship arrived with another 1,000, mostly agronomists and engineers. Six-hundred-and-ninety-three were dead. The third ship landed with 1,000 public specialists (i.e. politicians and civil servants), educators, and planetary surveyors. Nine-hundred-and-two dead bodies were systematically loaded into the newly built crematoriums. After spying the fourth ship descending though the sky, General Max turned and looked back over his shoulder at the colony. The landing field was on a slight rise, so he could see the entirety of the colony stretched out across the teal plain; housing for the 4,000-plus humans the robots were programmed to provide for, factories, greenhouses, laboratories, a hospital, a civic center with classrooms and a theater. Also an outdoor amphitheater, parks and athletic fields that had never been used. In the two years since their arrival, the medical specialists had never figured a way to vaccinate against the planet’s harmful bacteria, so every structure had to be sealed tight and the air recycled with negative pressure. Nobody got to play outside without a heavy environmental suit. The agronomists had yet to grow a crop under the influence of the harmful radiation, which the researchers had not devised a method of blocking. All the livestock and poultry, meant as breeding stock, had died. Everybody lived on an algae-mush, which everyone hated but was the only viable food source they could come up with. Max looked over the factories populated mostly by robots, the 4,000-plus houses, less than 600 of which were occupied, and the empty parks and fields; a ghost town spread over a greenish-blue land under a lavender sky. He watched the new spacecraft, it’s bright white thrusters, slow itself and float onto the landing field. He wondered how many of its 1,000 colonists were still alive. He felt a sense of hope, even expectation, not so much for the survival rate as he had no illusions about that. These were the artisans, the artists, and the writers; the tinkerers, the inventers, the dreamers, and the imaginers. And he knew, just knew, however many of them there actually were, what they would say about this world would ultimately be what created it. - CH  * * * BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such … * * * ... previous verse ... The Agendas * * * Blessings Of The Circuit Rider The worst part at first wasn’t that it made his ass hurt, it’s that it made him look like he was a mortician. Later on, of course, the ass hurting rose to prominence, especially at first. Though he knew, like the stableman told him, his ass would get used to the wider girth of the new horse and the mortician thing would again be the paramount complaint. His old horse was smaller in both width and height, and she was a pleasant light brown and white, and no one could see him upon her and mistake him for anything other than the circuit preacher he was. But this new one was jet black as a collapsed coal mine, tall and broad and looked all the part of a funeral horse. “I can’t ride this,” he told the stableman. “People will think I’m coming to town to bury them alive in the wrath of god.” “It’ll be fine,” the weary stableman told him. “He’s a mature mount, been rode hard, and ain’t got much buck left in him. But he’s fit and strong and not so fragile as your last one. He’ll be a slow and gentle ride you can rely on. Besides,” he added, “Just ain’t got nothing else that’ll see you to the next town.” Well, he actually had a little more buck in him than the stableman gave him credit for, and the preacher could see right off that he jerked a little more and carried himself with a bit more tension. He could see the effect the horse had not half-an-hour down the trail when he met two riders, looked like farm hands, coming the other way. When he rode the old horse, people would meet him and smile and take on a friendly air. But the farm hands took one look at him on his big black horse and he in his preacher-man’s suit and clammed right up, went ridged and stopped talking. He could almost hear them say, ‘Cheese it! It’s the Man!’ And as they passed one of them actually solemnly said, “Blessings to you, Father.” Father?! He’d never been called ‘Father’ on the trail. How, he thought, could he preach the gentle blessings of Jesus Christ when he looked like the Angel Of Death? But he admitted, the big black horse availed himself well, seemed to calm and smooth his gait when he saw the travelers coming, held his head up high. He patted the horse’s neck when the men had passed. Maybe they just had to get used to each other, he thought. Maybe he wasn’t giving the big horse a chance. Early afternoon that first day he came around a bend and saw the wagon he’d been hearing the squeaking wheels of for a piece. It was being pulled by mule, he saw, and driven by a lone woman, the wagon itself covered by a tarp. The big black horse wasn’t moving fast, but it was moving faster than the wagon and he was overhauling it quickly. The woman turned when he heard the hoof beats behind her. Her face was mature and weathered, and her head was covered by a scarf. He waved to her in hello, but she scrunched her head around and seemed to pull it lower between her shoulders. Shoot, he thought, then took his hat off, thinking he might look a little more welcoming as he passed. “Hello, friend,” he called as he pulled even with her and slowed. She looked up at him, guarded, and nodded. “Howdy.” He smiled broadly, took on the most pleasant demeaner he could, hoping desperately not to seem so grim. “It’s a fine, lovely day the Lord has given us.” She shrugged. “You say so.” “Do you have far to go, ma’am? Do you have family waiting?” She looked at him. “Hey, you’re that preacher.” “That’s right,” he told her. “I just read services back in town. Probably same one you’re coming from.” She looked straight ahead again. “How’d that work out for you?” “Well,” he said, “I had to put my horse down whilst I was there, a sweet little thing I was much attached to. Me and this big fella here are just getting acquainted.” She asked, “That mean more to you than the services you read?” He hadn’t prioritized it before, but, yeah, it did. He said finally, “Well, you know ma’am, you read a lot more services than find horses that will carry you well.” They rode in silence a bit. He asked her, “You do OK in town this trip.” She chortled. “Not so well, then. If you don’t mind me saying, I thought you seemed a little down.” She reached back behind her, grabbed the corner of the tarp, and whipped it aside. The coffin it’d been covering gleamed in the sunlight. He said, “Oh, my.” She said, “You lost a horse. I lost my son.” “My goodness, what happened?” “They hung him.” It hit him then; that’d be the hanging that had brought so many into town and provided him so many churchgoers to swell the collection plate. She said, “I guess ain’t right to call him my son; I raised him after his mom died when he was just three. But he felt like a son to me.” “I’m so sorry,” he told her, and he was. She whipped the tarp back over. “Kid didn’t never have no chance. Dad ran off before he was born. Mom died, Me and Pa took him in, but shoot, we’d already raised five of our own and he got everything handed down. We’re getting’ on in years. We couldn’t give him much, can barely keep the farm goin’ anymore. We did what we could, but he was always angry. Angry, angry child. He started acting out early. Thiefin, lyin’, cheatin, didn’t want to work for nobody, felt he was owed. “And, Preacher, he likely was. Lord’s got to be takin’ better care of people.” She was making a statement, a judgement. More often as not, people would ask why the lord let bad things happen, asking questions; why? She wasn’t. She was drawing a firm line in the sand. He understood the attitude. He said after a long pause, “I know it seems so.” Then, “May I ride with you a spell; perhaps say a little verse?” She shook her head. “I believe I’d enjoy this quiet ride to myself, thanks anyway.” He tipped his hat, “Peace be with you then,” and let the big black horse trot past her, even prance a little. Oh, here was something the old, little horse couldn’t do, he thought, and that was put a quick distance between himself and anything he’d rather be away from. The blessing of being a circuit rider; never being caught next to something he didn’t want to be. But boy oh boy, his ass hurt. - CH  * * *
BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such … * * * ... previous verses ... Scheduled * * * Sleep Mode For that brief spurt of time she was not only awake, she was aware of being awake. That she was awake was not at all a surprise. The computers woke each traveler in their pod on average a couple times a day. It was necessary to keep the brain functional; long-term stasis sleep could shut a brain down permanently, and the brain could begin to sustain damage after only a few days. So two to three times a day each traveler had their brain ‘tickled’ via computer feeds. Each ‘tickle’ had to be specific to each traveler, matching their particular EEG frequencies across all five (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma) bands. But the idea was to just tickle it – just nudge it enough to start the synopses firing and then dial it all back into stasis before the brain reached consciousness. If stasis was not restored in time (and it was assumed that might happen at some point during the decades in space, if not regularly) the computer would instantly recognize the condition and 1) initiate an accelerated stasis protocol if that protocol were not already engaged, and 2) inject the traveler with a powerful sedative intended to both induce unconsciousness and deaden the pain receptors (coming out of stasis without pain killers having been compared to the world’s worst hangover times ten). Each pod came with one more, passive failsafe: they were designed with total sensory deprivation. No sight, no sound, weightless and floating in body-temperature slime dulling the sense of touch. Theoretically it would be no different that emerging from REM sleep, coming out of a dream but not realizing it, and dropping right back into a deep slumber, stasis re-established, the voyage of over 1,000 space colonists silently continuing at half the speed of light. Only she did realize it. She actually thought, ‘wait a minute, I’m awake.’ She was thinking about her dog, who needed a bath, and was actually creating a to-do list to that effect, which she realized she couldn’t do if she were in stasis. And then she actually tried to cry out, “Ouch! Holy crap!” Two things had gotten past the designers. First, the same drugs intended to deaden the pain receptors actually burned like hell when injected, thus spiking the brain’s awareness of consciousness. Second, in part to keep the traveler weightless, the arms were not restrained. So what she did when the searing pain from the drugs began, and what the individuals in both pods on either side of her had already done, as dozens of others had already done, as hundreds more would do in the years ahead, was grope across her body, grab absentmindedly at what was hurting in her other arm, and succeed in yanking out a number of tubes, ports and catheters used by the pod to supply her with critical drugs and nutrients that would have sustained her during the voyage. She fought to stay awake now, but of course the pod would drag her back to stasis, brain implants continuing to bind them together. In time it would notice as her EEG frequencies began to weaken. When they stopped altogether, it would flood itself with a gas designed to preserve the body within. Then it would put itself into sleep mode. - CH  * * *
BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such … * * * The Agendas He thought of the preacher who rode his circuit on an ass because, he said, ‘it worked for Jesus’. He’d soon changed that to ‘it reminds people of Jesus’ since it wasn’t working at all as a reliable mode of transportation. But it clearly reminded somebody that Jesus rode it into the city where he would be crucified because, at a particularly infamous stage of one particular journey, he was robbed, beaten, and murdered for the $13.69 he’d collected at the last town. Thought of him, not that he’d actually known him. So far as he knew, no one did; it was just a story told by traveling preachers to remind each other not to get too sanctimonious. Thought of him now, he guessed, because he was leading his lame horse into his next town. He’d been assigned six churches in six towns by the Synod. Each town was somewhere between three and six days ride if he stayed to a set route, plus he always stayed over a day to meet parishioners, perform weddings or funerals, and generally have a breather. The entire circuit at that rate took a little over three weeks, so each church got services on whichever day of the week he happened to get there. In this case he was getting to town late Monday evening, so services would be Tuesday morning, 9 a.m. sharp. He’d been riding his mare into four years. He got her young, but meek. She was always meek, so she was always easy to ride; never fast, but always easy. And she was on the small side, some even called her fragile. But he figured he wasn’t riding her hard anyway, and he liked her gentleness. “At least,” one other preacher told him when he got her, “You’re not riding an ass.” Indeed, he’d found her to be a wonderful traveling companion; never got spooked, even in thunderstorms, and seemed to bond to him quickly. Light brown in color with lots of white bands, including one down her nose, and he called her Penelope. He liked to sing hymns to himself as he traveled alone and she actually seemed to enjoy that; actually seemed to step a little higher and a little livelier, though he suspected it was his imagination. But also indeed, that fragility meant she tired on longer rides, and she often began favoring a leg, as though one or more of her fetlocks were terribly sore. He carried with him an ointment an old cowboy told him about, and every night he would wrap each fetlock with a dab of it and that seemed to help. If she seemed particularly worn down, he’d stop early; give her a chance to rest. Sometimes he even took an extra day. Lately, though, that seemed to be the case more often, and that little over three weeks to make the circuit had grown to right at five. That, he was pretty sure, would annoy the churches and eventually the Synod but nobody had said anything yet. On this day he knew he should stop, but he was so close to town. Maybe just another hour would see him there, so he kept going. Just a quarter mile or so outside town, Penelope whinnied loudly and stopped using her right front hoof. He quick jumped off, let her rest a few minutes, then led her the rest of the way on foot, each step clearly painful. When they reached the stable there at the edge of town the stableman took one look at her and said, “Well, shit.” They spent time looking her over and wrapped each fetlock, the right front in particular, and the stableman said he’d look after her and try to get her healed up. Nothing else he could do, the Preacher took his saddlebags which contained his few clothes, his bible, his notebook in which he scribbled sermons, and his sketchpads and pencils, and headed off to the Widow Roxanne’s boarding house where he always stayed. He passed the jail on the way, noticed the inmate inside watching him, heard carpenters building something behind it. Oh, please not a scaffold, he thought. He tried to remember if there’d been a trial or something last time he’d been through but was too upset over Penelope to think. On the one hand, he hated hangings and hoped to be out of town before then. But on the other hand, hangings always brought more people to town which swelled the folks he could preach to, which also filled the collection plate. “Get me out of this, preacher?” the inmate called to him. He called back after a couple beats, “Trust in the Lord, my son.” It was a cliché response but was the best he come up with as preoccupied as he was. Another few beats and the inmate called, “He ain’t done me no damn good and I ain’t your damn son you worthless damn son of a bitch.” Seemed to fit his mood. The Widow Roxanne saw him coming up the street and met him on the porch; he always wired the next town when he left the last, so she knew he was coming. “I saved you a room, but t’weren’t easy,” she said. “Hanging tomorrow”. He put his saddlebags down, smiled warmly and said, “I so appreciate that, ma’am, I sure do. Been lots happening, I guess”. She said, “That Kyle kid was always horse thiefin’; shot a man and got caught this time. Open and shut case, sentence passed. Hanging Noon tomorrow”. He nodded. “Can we still do services tomorrow.” “Word’s been spread,” she said, “9 a.m. sharp. C’mon inside and rest yourself; supper in a couple hours.” It was a good pot roast when it came and he shared it with six other women and men staying that night there at the boarding house, but he found he wasn’t all that hungry. He brought out his sketchpad and made portraits of some of the other guests, delighting each of them. He never charged anything when he sketched, but he’d found it usually came back to him through the collection plate, which he knew would be bursting the next day. He tossed and turned most of the night, as he often did sleeping indoors. He’d thought it because he was so accustomed to sleeping outside, but as he lay there it dawned on him it was because he missed being close to Penelope. He rose and dressed before the sun was much above the horizon, didn’t wait for breakfast, went straight for the stables. True to his word, the stableman seemed to have spent the night there, was gently rubbing Penelope’s sore fetlock, but when he looked up and saw the Preacher his expression was sorrowful and grim. “Well,” he said, “Have a look.” He went around and into the stall and saw Penelope holding her right front hoof off the ground and the fetlock swollen and inflamed. Stableman said, “I think you knew when you brought her in.” Preacher nodded. “I knew when it happened. It’d been coming on, I guess, I just didn’t want to think about it.” “Yeah”, stableman said, “She’s a sweet little thing, I can see why you wouldn’t.” They were quiet a moment, Penelope watching him forlornly with her deep, brown eyes. Stableman said, “I guess you know what has to happen.” Preacher said. “Yep. Stableman said, “Want me to take care of it for you? You can go on off to the church, get ready for services.” Preacher said, “I don’t carry the instrument, so I guess you’ll have to. But no, I don’t want her to be alone.” Stableman nodded like he knew exactly. “We’ll lead her out back, away from the other animals. I’ll be right back.” He went off to get what he needed, and the Preacher affectionately stroked his Penelope’s nose. He put his forehead against her, closed his eyes. He felt himself building agendas of all the little logistical items that would have to be done next, and he felt himself building them up like sandbags holding back a flood. Extra chairs would have to be had. Were there enough songbooks? He had to tell somebody this and he had to tell somebody that and, mostly, he had to figure out a sermon. He tightened his agenda as he heard the stableman shuffling towards him, carrying the instrument, a round clicking into its chamber, a flood on the other side. - CH  * * *
BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such … * * * Impossible Reconstruction of the interchange nearest the funeral home was recently completed, so it was much wider, much smoother than before, and it dumped him rapidly back onto the four west-bound lanes of the busy interstate with relatively light drama. He merged between an Audi SUV and a Camaro, two more lanes still to the left if he wanted them, but he didn’t, traffic moving steadily, if sedately, impatient but restrained, as if reflecting the end of the morning rush hour, just as he reflected the end of his friend’s life. Not that he’d known him that well, no better than he knew this stretch of interstate that he found reason to navigate every couple months or so. Guy he had worked with, had lunched with, traded daily pleasantries with, made casual conversation with. He roughly knew the composition of his family, knew the sports teams he rooted for, knew the shows he watched, remembered a couple of the jokes he’d told because those were the things that defined casual acquaintance. He’d arrived at the visitation about halfway through and signed the book on the way in. The family had decided to forgo the standard receiving line in favor of milling with the couple dozen well-wishers and he was happy about that. He wandered along, spent time looking at the pictures of the guy’s life arranged throughout and watched the slide show of more photographs projected onto a wall. Turns out the guy had received a couple awards from the civic organization he’d belonged to, so he lingered at those. He hadn’t known about the civic organization or the awards. He recognized that was likely the tip of the iceberg of things he didn’t know. He didn’t see any of the old crew, or perhaps simply didn’t recognize them; hadn’t met the wife before and wasn’t sure who she was or whether he should barge into conversation to find out. He stood at the body respectfully for a few minutes – thought the guy looked pissed off laying there – wandered slowly past the photographs again and was out of there, as planned, well before the memorial service began. He hadn’t talked to anyone, just smiled, and nodded at a few who seemed to want to nod and smile back. The flow of traffic on the interstate didn’t seem incongruous to that experience; a slow and brief familiarity with each other on the way to splitting off, he to another interstate that led back to his office, or his apartment further on. He found himself thinking less about his friend, whom he had arguably barely known well enough to call a friend, than about his ex-wife, who two days before had called to cry over the death of her cat. Theirs had not been the most amicable of break ups, it coming after twenty-five years of lukewarm marriage, yet in her profound grief over her cat (a creature he had not missed in the slightest) she had sought him out for solace. He admitted, as he thought about it, that he missed the marriage and what they had built together, if not necessarily the relationship itself, and he felt an emptiness over that; a death in and of itself. Just at that moment the highway flowed over the crest of a long rise, and he could see miles and miles into the distance, all eight-lanes of the interstate stretching to the horizon, and every inch of it covered, saturated with vehicles. At that second it struck him the sheer number seemed impossible; every vehicle at least one person, every person a different path, moving away and towards different points, different origins, and different conclusions. And this was just one of a half dozen interstates into, out of, and around the city, and this was just a small city at best. He thought about his son off one path to the military because it seemed like the easiest thing to do, then about his daughter who had graduated nursing school just in time for a pandemic to exhaust and drain her of any enthusiasm she might have had for the profession. He thought of his youngest daughter, still at home with his ex and into piercings and tats and with a vague idea of a liberal arts college he couldn’t begin to afford. He thought of all of them, of his friend lying in his casket, of his ex-wife, of his ex-wife’s dead cat, of all the people moving towards their own conclusions, no more invested in each other than were the vehicles on this highway, no more courteous than necessary to not smash into each other. That’s when the emptiness of his perspective amplified and swallowed him. What he should have felt at the visitation. What he should have felt at the breakup of his marriage and the disconnectedness of his family. Surrounded by individuals locked in their separate vehicles traversing the same stretch of highway at the same time, for however briefly. He saw clearly from his point on the crest that the highway would pull them all in different directions. Then he began to cry. - CH  Something new. I've begun making digital art. For the uninitiated, digital art begins with a blank canvas, as opposed to photo art wherein the finished art is derived from a photographic capture. In the case of the later, the artist applies any number of computer adjustments and filters to interpret the photograph in heightened way. A photograph may certainly be captured creatively; photo art reverses the process and interprets the capture creatively, artistically. Notice, I don’t think of the starting point as a photograph – I think of it as a capture. There is no ‘capture’ with digital art, aside from that which the artist imagines in their own head. The artist shifts their imagination onto the computer screen using an input device like a mouse or, preferably, and stylus and a drawing pad. Every line, every dot, must be input by the artist, versus the computer interpreting lines and dots as the artist instructs it. Yeah - that’s a fancy way of saying it’s painting on a computer. For this work, I began by making a pen sketch (which I would later hide just as an artist using a canvas hides their initial sketch), then layered over heavy brush strokes, watercolor and spatter, and finally adjusted the background with shading and graphite penciling. This is my first completed digital work. - CH  * * * BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such … * * * Previous verses ... click to follow links ... Finding The New Ones Sleeping With A New One Love In Phase * * * Sweaty Guy With Glasses On The Hot End Of The Building Farmed off to a basement room they all hated in a poorly circulated building across town in a neighborhood with no decent place for lunch was the Bugaboo staff. The official title was something more boring, something separating them into a segregated section of the much larger division that delt with error tracking and identifying malfunctions – operative word being ‘identify’, and mission being fixing it. The Bugaboo staff was staffed with tracking stuff that was anomalous – stuff that didn’t fit into a particular category of problem, if indeed a problem actually existed. Such as, why did certain drones not ‘talk’ to certain other drones? Each of the thousands of drones in the air was supposed share data with every other drone about the millions of people whose every move they were tracking. Wasn’t really a problem – at least no one thought so - because, as long as the drones were sharing data with the complete network, it didn’t matter that certain drones were excluded. It was just curious. If the Bugaboo staff ever figured it out, first a committee would have to decide whether or not it was a problem. If it was, it would be taken away from the quirky, nerdy bunch of folks assigned to the Bugaboo staff and given to others to figure out. The role of the Bugaboo staff, then, was to watch the weird stuff, red flag them if they could show an actual problem, then get the hell out of the way. The Bugaboo staff sort of quietly resented that, just as they resented the wide open, wall-less and cubical-less warehouse space they had to work in, the sick-green color of the walls, the bad lighting, the crappy circulation in which one side was too hot and the other too cold and the air always stale, the noisy echoes that bounced around from every little sound or sneeze or chair-leg-squeak, and the cheap-ass chairs they were given to sit in. They resented it, but of course would never say anything. The Authoritarians would not tolerate it. This one guy in question on the Bugaboo staff slid his glasses back up his nose – he was constantly sliding his glasses back up his nose – and used a tissue to mop his cheeks and forehead. He took a swig from his water bottle. He had a condition in which he sweated a lot. He used prescription anti-perspirant/deodorant and special body wash to counteract it, but it didn’t always work like he wanted. He was also assigned to a desk on the side of the building that ran too hot. That’s just how it went, he thought, and never complained. He put the water bottle down and turned back to his computer. He could see his reflection a little in the screen. He had a bushy moustache that covered completely his thin upper lip. His eyes were close together and small, and though the thick lenses of his glasses made them look normal-sized, they also exaggerated and warped their shape. He was sensitive about it, but it motivated him to work harder and, indeed, he was good at tracking bugaboos. He was the guy who had figured out why some small data streams were just slightly larger than certain other data streams. They knew deviants were disseminating unapproved information – he’d been the guy that figured out the deviants were using a device that broke the information streams into tiny bits that attached themselves to nondescript data streams, then broke off and reassembled themselves somewhere downstream they couldn’t find. The big shots at up at division hadn’t figured out what to do about it yet, but, hey, wasn’t his problem anymore they told him. His hand worked a control knob to adjust the attitude of the drone he was piloting, taking it a bit lower to his subject. He’d been assigned to a team studying the bugaboo of why some people appeared ‘fuzzy’, in an electronic sort of way, to the drones. The signal the drones collected just wasn’t ‘sharp’ for some people, and observational data seemed to be missing. It confused the drones, each of which monitored hundreds of individuals at the same time, and the fuzziness for some of them was like a record skipping. He’d already ascertained that the fuzziness in question seemed to be briefly present when an individual dropped from the drones’ view. He later found it was there, just for a split second, when an individual popped back into view. Since the bugaboo of people seeming to drop in and out of view was being studied by a different team, he hadn’t said anything yet because he knew the two teams would then be merged and he hated some of those guys. Then he got an idea about phasing – an element of string theory that hypothesized that matter could exist in different forms in the same space if they were phased in such a way that their atoms fell between each other. It had applications in a number of disciplines but had never been applied to electronic surveillance devices. So he spent parts of several shifts writing a code, requested and received permission to take manual control of a particular drone, and had just, not long before, uploaded the code. The drone had been programmed to monitor a group of artists in the theater district. Artists were automatically considered potential deviants. When they dispersed, he selected a particular guy, tracked him home, scanned his neighborhood, watched him enter a building, climb stairs, and enter his apartment, an eerie infrared picture of the neighborhood on his screen surrounded by text labeling data streams. Now he activated the code he had uploaded. There were hundreds. They appeared out of thin air, did not appear to be human. He sucked air. His small eyes opened big. Data streams went crazy – red lights all over his screen. He zoomed into his subject. He had crawled into bed. There was something there with him. And they were lovers. - CH  * * * BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such … * * * Previous verses ... click to follow links ... Finding The New Ones Sleeping With A New One * * * Factors Contributing To Homo Sapiens Evolutionary Failure By Anonymous (Slightly Edited)
* * * Love In Phase She had never fully ascertained at what point it was okay not to pretend to sleep as her lover curled close to her. Deep, slow, profoundly contented breathing, sweet and innocent, her funny artist, who knew who she was. Her mother had suggested she was merely keeping him as a pet. She considered that supposition and saw its merits, but believed it was based on incomplete information. Her mother did not have firsthand information regarding the emotional strength of their relationship. It was a clinical conclusion, but, of course, that’s how she … They … did things. It corresponded with point number four of the nine recognized ‘Factors Contributing To Homo Sapiens Evolutionary Failure’, as identified by the humans themselves. Self-delusion was not in her … Their … nature. She wasn’t sleeping next to her sweet lover because she didn’t sleep. Her brain achieved the same function by entering into a meditative, but fully aware, state, lasting a fraction of the time, which she engaged on the fly at numerous times throughout the day. She was not easily deceived, or self-deluded, because her brain was not compartmentally organized as humans had been, and due to a small section of the frontal lobe, not present in humans, which perceived and reconciled fact-based logic with emotions; in short, she did not rationalize. And her presence was not detected by the swarm of drones with which the human’s authoritarian government tracked every move, every subliminal action of every unspoken thought, because she … They … were phased. Her great great grandmother also had a relationship with a human. She recalled that the result of that union, her great grandfather, had been considered just slightly odd, if, on the other hand, of an advanced situational awareness which enabled him to be quite successful. Less well documented was the supposed relationship with a human several generations prior to that. Human DNA, while quite diluted, was present in all of Them. So was Neandertal DNA in homo sapiens. That’s how it goes. Her lover moved in his sleep and seemed to whisper, eyes moving rapidly under his eyelids – dreaming, she knew. A brain function she accomplished more efficiently and without the subject-to-interpretation imagery. She reached over to lightly stroke his hair. To do that, she had to just slightly phase-shift. The natural harmonics of her body’s molecules … Their bodies’ molecules … were just slightly off the human phase, like two pictures of the same thing just a hair apart. She … They … could phase shift due to a section of the hippocampus also not present in humans. She could move between just barely even with human phasing to completely invisible. That was how she … They … could both be seen and undetectable by electronic imagery. Phased away from humans, They had their own society, their own hospitals and schools and grocery stores and homes, unseen yet occupying the same space. Phased with humans, they could access the same information and resources. Humans counted their population at nearly ten billion. But they only thought there were that many. They could also hear the Earth. Due again to a piece of brain the humans didn’t have, They could feel what the Earth felt, knew when it was being hurt. That was another reason to phase with humans; to influence them towards behaviors less destructive to the planet. Attempting such influence was frustrating and slow, but preferable to discovery. Stroking her lover’s forehead as he breathed, she knew she was likely just visible to the swarm of drones outside. She also knew that even at that level of phasing the drone wouldn’t quite know what to make of her, not quite be able to detect her. It was a trick They used all the time when They wanted to skim the surface of human phasing. She could feel one of the drones watching him, as he slept, but not her. She smiled at her lover. The drone couldn’t see her. And then, quite suddenly, it could. And everything changed. - CH |
Curtis HendricksAll my life I have had to learn to do things differently. To see the world differently. Archives
March 2021
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