It looked like the death of the saints, all over the town. One by one the saint figurines were found, toppled over. The town authorities were sure it was teenagers, bored and unsupervised, but the usual suspects had verifiable alibis. No, this was an event of a different sort.

They decided to look with different eyes. All of the saint figurines on the East side were female, and all were pointed in the same direction. The seemed unusual. At first they thought maybe the perpetrator was right handed, and had pushed the statues down going across himself. But then when the detectives looked in other parts of the town, they realized that the statues were oriented in slightly different ways. So some looked like they were pushed forward, some backward, some to the right.

The lines were plotted on a map and all led to the oldest funeral home in town. “Doc” Brown had run the place since his grandpa died, having inherited the business since he failed out of medical school. His grades weren’t good enough for living people, but his skills were plenty for the dead.

His grandpa took him on as an apprentice all those years back, getting him to drive the pick-up van to transport the bodies. His Papa wasn’t too thrilled that his son wasn’t going to be a doctor. He wanted his progeny to carry on his dreams, not understanding that each generation has its own burdens to carry and doesn’t have time for the past. It isn’t fair to expect somebody else to live your life for you, after all.

Was that the reason the saint statues were pointed towards it? A dream deferred, an accidental career? Was that the reason, or was it something darker? Psychics were called in after the detectives drew a blank. The newspapers weren’t informed of the true nature of these outside consultants, but they suspected. The police had no need to be so cautious – the town was a lot more open-minded than they could have ever suspected.

The psychics pulled out their cards and sticks and crystals. They lit incense at sites. They dowsed, they chanted, and still they had no idea what it all meant. It was only when Bessie Maguire had a dream about the statues that anybody had any clue what it all meant.

Now Ms. Maguire was as quiet as a church mouse most of the time. She kept to herself and never caused a fuss, as you might expect of an elderly spinster. She’d taught kindergarten most of her life, and if you can’t trust a kindergarten teacher I don’t know who you can trust. She didn’t want to share about her dream, but it was so vivid she knew she had to tell somebody. So she went to talk with her pastor. He said she’d have to tell the police, and who was she to go against the pastor’s orders? So down she went to Central and told them all about her dream.

The statues were pointed to the funeral home not because of what it is, but because of what it was. Long ago, way past living memory, that part of town was an oak grove. Not maple, or even chestnut, but oak. That was important. The trees had all been tall and thick, creating a sanctuary of stillness. No pagans worshiped there, but that didn’t matter to the oaks. This was long before the old religions had been rediscovered, or invented, by New Age folks. Nobody in these parts knew the old ways, divorced as they were from the old country. But the oaks still knew. They knew the same way all the cherry trees across the world knew when it was time to bloom and when it was time to drop their petals like some kind of spring snowfall.

But what the oaks knew was darker stuff that spoke of more than just impermanence, but transcendence. The oaks spoke of living on in the next generation, not just as an ancestor or as a memory, but in actuality. The oaks knew that they could hide themselves within every acorn, not as a half but as a whole. It was parthenogenesis. The whole grove was a shrine to Athena, goddess of wisdom and it was filled with owls.

So it was fitting that this Ms. Maguire, this maiden, had a vision about this place, as Athena was not only a maiden but born from the head of her father Zeus, the God of the gods. There was no coupling in her creation. She was fully made, complete, not half of her parent, but whole. She was Zeus, but in a different arrangement of elements, in the same way a lump of coal is also a diamond. One wasn’t better than the other, in spite of the dollar amount. A diamond won’t keep you warm or cook your food, after all.

And then the strangest thing started happening. The bodies in that morgue didn’t stay dead. But only the female ones. It didn’t matter if they were maidens or not, they woke up, completely healed of whatever had ailed them. Maybe this is why it was only the female saints who were affected. But even stranger, the newly reanimated acted differently. They looked the same as long as they been in the cooler when the Event happened, but they were different somehow.

Nobody knew what triggered the Event. All they knew was that there had been a strange advance notice that something was up when the saints all toppled over. Had it begun then? Or long ago? When does a person begin – when they are born, when they are conceived, when their parents meet for the first time? Or even before that?

Does it matter? Because now was all the town could handle. They didn’t have the energy for philosophy. Now they had to deal with people coming back to life. The relatives had already moved into their old homes. The estate process had already begun. The casseroles that had been brought over by kind neighbors and dutiful church members weren’t finished, but that was to be expected.

Here’s one of the ways that the second-lifers acted differently – they could talk with owls. I don’t mean that they could imitate their calls, but that they could actually understand what the owls were saying. It turned out that the myth was true – the owls were indeed speaking about upcoming deaths. They didn’t cause the deaths. They just knew, somehow, and talked about it in the same way that some people talked about the weather. But the second-lifers didn’t share this information with the regular people. They couldn’t handle the truth anyway.


Simon was a simian

Simon was a simian, but that’s not all. He had a pet human. Sure, he was careful about it. He made the human use a leash on him to make it look kosher. It wouldn’t do to have the authorities figure him out before he was ready to show his paw.

Sure, the human would hit him every now and then for show, to make it look like he was in charge. And Simon would snarl at him or cower, depending on the audience. It was all for show. The human knew the right force to use and how to pull back the stick just in time. He knew how to sell the blow so the punters would think he was in charge. But they both knew better. Simon called all the shots, always had.

Ever since he found his human alone and penniless in the side alley down the way from the tobacco shop, he knew his luck had changed. Now he could actually be in show business instead of begging in the streets. A monkey without a human was a nuisance. Everybody knew that. But a monkey with a human – now that was an act. People virtually lined up to put money in his little tin cup. Together they made a pretty penny with their hustle.

Sometimes he got the human to put strings on him to make it look like he was a marionette. Sometimes he’d walk around on stilts with a sign, some public service announcement. They’d do that on days when the cops were extra anxious to pop somebody for something. On those days they didn’t beg, but they still needed to go out to build their audience. Familiarity was important. Most people didn’t put money in the cup the first time they saw the pair.

The punters needed to see them several times, see others put money in first, to know what to do. It was a true hustle. It took a lot more finesse than you’d think. But they never did it too much. Just enough to afford a two bedroom walk-up on the East side, with enough left over to sponsor experiments in brain transfers.

Simon couldn’t wait to be done with his body. Nobody ever took him seriously. Who would? He was thankful that taboo in this culture kept him from being seen as food. The performing pigs and chickens didn’t have a chance once their skills started to wane. Their humans turned them straight into supper without so much as a “by your leave”, not like they would have gotten it anyway. Simon hoped to avoid that unpleasant experience long before it was a possibility. 

That’s why he was sponsoring research to transfer his consciousness into his human. It seemed simple enough on the surface. The brain was basically an electromagnetic medium. It seemed like it should be possible to re-record over what was there, laying down a new recording. His recording. Of his mind. 

He didn’t want anything as messy as an actual brain transplant, and he knew it wasn’t possible anyway, the differing sizes of the brains being the first issue. But also there was the matter of wiring of the nerves. Maybe he’d be able to think, but not able to talk or move. And if the transplant didn’t work, it might not be reversible. No, Simon wanted a sure thing, and he wanted it soon. But he was prepared to wait long enough to make sure it worked. In the meantime he’d continue the hustle and keep his human in the dark as to his plans.

The tuba train
















The Inca disappeared

because a) they went back home to the stars

or b) adequately proved to the ET’s

they were savvy enough.

Their pyramids are teleportation devices,

time / space machines,

like Stonehenge.

They are sited on/ in/ over a vortex,

and are precisely mathematical.

They “sing” the right frequency

to open and close doors in time.

They will return.

It wasn’t transportation.

They simply went from then to now.

Trouble is, I can’t tell you if then

was in the past or future.

Such details didn’t matter to them.

All time was fluid, not fixed, to them.

Time for them was like

a huge blanket thrown over a couch

not spread out even-like.

The bits of it touched other bits

or maybe it was also like an afghan

– made of one long string, knotted together.

It was one,

but it wasn’t stuck

with just that dimension.

Rosalee’s prize







A is for Astronaut

She’d always wanted to be an astronaut, ever since she discovered that plastic helmet in her grandparent’s attic. It had a green visor that turned the world a magical, alien color when she put it on her head. It was so much more than wearing tinted sunglasses. Everywhere she looked was altered. There was no “normal” sneaking in her peripheral vision. That was covered with the helmet. Sounds were different too – more muffled, more distant. It made her feel safer, more peaceful, more powerful to wear it.

She was born in a time before there were words for what she was. “Gifted” they knew for sure, but there was more. She was sensitive, perhaps overly so. Now she would say it was a gift to feel in an unfeeling world, but then she thought it a challenge, if not a curse. It was hard to keep friends. She made them like anyone else. It was easy in the jumble that was public school. People became friends easily, often for no other reason than survival. They joined up out of some instinct that said it was dangerous to go alone into that minefield of strange rules and stranger adults. Best to connect with others who are equally lost or oppressed. This is why cliques formed after all. Once the obvious groups were created by hobby or skill, what was often left were the oddballs, the misfits, the loners. They connected as a way of self-protection, an unspoken union with no dues or representatives

She’d fit in these groups for about a month or so, just long enough for her or them to quietly decide that there wasn’t a fit after all and one side or the other would quit spending time with each other. Thankfully this was before the era of social media, or as she thought of it now, anti-social media.

She was 50 now – far past the age of recruits to astronaut school. She was in good shape and probably could have endured the training, but it wasn’t even an option. Or so she thought. She looked it up. There were no age restrictions. The oldest so far was 46. She’d been telling herself “no” without even asking the question. She just assumed it wasn’t possible, so for her, it wasn’t. Maybe deep down her former friends knew this about her – knew her lonely fear of failure, her feckless worry. Perhaps they were afraid of catching her secret disease of failing before she even began.

But she was a different person now. There had been growth on her part. It was a blend of self-help books and counseling that finally pushed her over the edge of her fear. It was like she’d been forever standing at the cliffside, afraid of falling to her death – all the while not realizing she had wings.

How could birds know they were birds after all? Their wings were behind them. Their mothers appeared as if by magic. How could they know they too had that same magic, waiting to be revealed?

Perhaps her fair-weather friends had done her a favor after all, without even realizing it. By quietly abandoning her, she’d learned to value her own company. She’d learned how to be her own friend and how to take care of things herself. These turned out to be valuable traits in an astronaut.

Because now that is exactly what she was determined to become. She applied to the program, confident and beaming. She saved up her money and quit her job so she could commit all her energy to this. There was no backing out. There was no Plan B. It was A for Astronaut all the way. The moon (at least) or bust. No glass ceiling for her – she was going to smash through it with her rocketship.

The program had changed a lot since she had first looked into it. Every few years she’d read about astronauts or space and think of it as a loss love, or perhaps a lost dream. Now it was far less physically demanding and far more mental and emotional – and perhaps even spiritual. Now they didn’t have to endure many G-Forces, being spun about in centrifuges to ensure they could survive the ordeal of acceleration and reentry. No, being an astronaut was a lot easier since the invention of the Hop. Just strap the Hop onto your wrist, set the dials, and away you went. Within a matter of the blink of an eye you were there instead of here. Scientist’s weren’t sure how it worked, but they’d said the same about prescription drugs for years and that never stopped them. All they knew was that they got the results they were looking for.

All she was looking for was a chance, so they gave it to her. Training now was about how to interact with aliens on other planets. Of course, they weren’t “aliens” while on their home planet. She was. She was the odd one out, the anomaly when she was there. She was the one who had to adapt well enough to observe them and be able to return home in one piece. You never knew what might happen. Just judging how earth people treated their alien visitors, she knew anything was possible, so it was important to be as nonthreatening as possible.

It wasn’t possible to assume that the environment would be hospitable. She’d have to wear a spacesuit to protect against air that wasn’t of the right balance of gases for human, or ultraviolet rays that were too harsh, or gravity that was too high or too low. The spaceship had to become the spacesuit – able to provide a protective shell around the person to make it possible to explore in safety.

The government had long ago given up the idea of a space program, so it was handled by other private investors. They were generally in the tourist trade or in real estate, looking for a place for humans to go when they got bored.

So now she was testing out the suit in New York City. It wasn’t New New York – that was in Proxima Centauri 4, of course. But she had to practice somewhere, and you couldn’t get more alien than a big city that was populated with all sorts of people. So she’d Hop to New York or Nashville, or Mumbai or Mongolia, walking around and trying to interact with people. Part of it was getting used to being stared at and not reacting.

The suits had built-in translators, thankfully, but that only went so far. She had to understand the meaning beneath the words – the true message that was being conveyed. That would prove to be the most useful trait of any astronaut, and that was the one skill that couldn’t be taught. But it was hard to test for too. You couldn’t just ask someone if they could get along with anyone. Of course they’d say yes. It had to be proven, time and again, through various experiments, like what she was doing now.

Long ago, the space program gave precedence to ex-military for their astronauts. These days, they discovered that ex-retail was the best way to go. Those people had to know how to be diplomatic at all times, and how to keep the peace without a weapon. Not true with military folk, who were used to solving problems with their weapons instead of their words. Peaceful coexistence was the goal – not colonizing. They learned long ago that it was best to work and live together with a variety of beings. Too much homogeneity led to stagnation, an endless loop that would spiral back in on itself eventually, strangling ideas.

Healthy list

We had a “Commit to Fit” challenge at work recently. Here is the list of all the different activities. We were to do one a day. All of these are good options for getting and staying healthy.

Eat 5 servings of fruit/vegetables

Try a new healthy recipe.

Meatless Monday

Schedule an annual exam.

Write a gratitude list

Try an alternate form of transportation.

Dance Party to your favorite song.

Take a 20 minute walk.

Sleep 7-8 hours

Try a new exercise.

Screen Free after 8 pm.

Take your blood pressure.

20 minutes of reading.

Drink 64 ounces of water.


Break from Social Media.

20 minutes of silence or meditation.