Musings

 Musings

Noel Laflin

3-14-23

Sometimes a story comes about - sometimes not.

Mules, monkeys, snakes, raccoons, birds, squirrels, and even red-tailed roosters have all found a long forgotten voice and found their way here over the years.

Word-laden canvases have overflowed at times. I sometimes look back and reflect on old cavernous canyons, racing rapids, cascading cataracts, winding waterfalls, cunning crocodiles, stunning shows of shooting stars and massive meteorites menacing Earth; it wasn't really menacing, just a large fireball that scared the bejesus out of me fifty years ago. But it seemed menacing at the time.

Friends, family, teachers, lovers, strangers, and long-dead pets have all made their debut with a maddening arrangement and rearrangement of an elusive word or two as well.

And so these survivors of memory jump to life and strut about - as other misaligned misses and messes recognize their shortcomings and creep away - threatening to reappear, perhaps another day.

Remembrances, musings, or whatever you prefer to call my sequencing of words just have to be written down and stored away, like canned food in a mental fallout shelter - and sometimes shared, as is so frequently the case, i.e., like now. But not all - gratefully not all, as that could be embarrassing.

But by no means are any of them bastard stories, as I plainly know who their father is.

If you ask, I might tell you that the writing was begun because I had a fear of forgetting too much. The unearthing of so many memories rapidly became an addictive type of therapy. And as word rapidly spread throughout the grainy gray matter, all sorts of brain-addled ghosts began showing up and offering advice - all vying for attention. And, needy sprites they continue to be.

Subsequently, by painstakingly placing one word after another - oft times due to the whispering of a pesky spirit - a beginning, which sometimes becomes the end, and vice versa, is sometimes brought to light and shared here.

And sometimes not - as some things are just a little too embarrassing to share - at least for now.