Nano Day 10 - No title as of yet...

[joegoda]

For Capi, who listens. For the readers, who read.


"I guess, then, that it would be best if we got you back to your parents." I picked up our trash and carried them to the nearby receptacle. "Grab the food, it's time we were heading out." I smiled at her. "I'm all relaxed now."

She nodded, and gathered the coke and the sandwich fixings. "How is your butt?" she asked.

"Eh?" I was a bit confused, then remembered my statement earlier about my butt hurting. "It's fine, except for one or two major pains in it."

"I think I understand that," she said as we walked back to the van. I dropped a ten dollar bill into Bishop's donation box as I passed it. "I have some of the same pains, myself."

We got in the van, backed out of the parking lot and headed back onto highway 165. What we had talked about wasn't exactly clear to me. Angelina said a lot of things that just didn't add up. She was either in love, or was not in love with this guy back in New York. Anthony, if he existed, was either in love or was not in love with her. She was either pregnant with Anthony's child or she wasn't pregnant at all. There's also the story about her brothers, her parents, and Anthony's parents and sisters. None of which may be true, or a part of which may be true, or all of it may be true.

Her story That is a big, big load of uncertainty. This is what I know of uncertainty. If you are patient, and willing to wait, that uncertainty will become a certainty and then you can quit worrying about it.

I wasn't exactly calling her a liar, but I wasn't born yesterday, and her story was a very big fish to swallow.

And I don't like fish.

My father taught us all, all four of his boys, that dispassionate discourse is the best way to handle a conflict. To discuss the issue without ego, calmly and with proof and validation would win over any disagreement. At the very least, you could agree to disagree, and knowing each other's viewpoints, could accept those opposite viewpoints as belonging to the other person. Regardless of how wrong you might personally think them to be. Different people, different viewpoints.

He also taught us to investigate, to think, to ponder and weigh the evidence set before us. He taught us to dig into the evidence for the truth, because even the most minute detail could still hide the facts of what was really going on. He was the one that turned me onto Sherlock Holmes, who, to this day, even though he was a fictional character, is one of my greatest heroes. "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains--however improbable--must be the truth." And there is "We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations."

The Buddhists call it an 'empty mind', to rid the mind of distractions so that you may concentrate on the now and the moment, which in my case meant dividing the truth from the crap of the story Angelina told me from the truth Angelina told me.

I made some assumptions.

Because I knew we were being followed, I had to assume that she was being followed. I don't know why anyone would follow me, and the threads were connected to her whirly-gig, not my kite.

I completely tossed out the pregnancy idea, because, if she was, she wasn't far enough along to show. Since she had been on the road, hitchhiking from New York, I had to believe she had been out for a few weeks. Something, pheromones, or the look in the eye, or even the lines on her palm, would have given her away.

Yes, I know that the palmistry thing is only about thirty percent accurate, and most of that was pure instinct and intuition. There, now you know the secret to palmistry. Go with your gut feeling about the person, make up some generalities and a few of them are bound to be right. Become an instant success and have every stranger that knows you can 'read' a palm thrust out their dirty paw for you to examine. Parlor tricks.

Still, thirty percent is a lot more than zero. She either wasn't pregnant or there was something not quite right with my figuring. And there have been a number of times when I was wrong.

As far as her brother, Daniel, I have no reason to not believe he was a good guy. I have no reason to not believe he was her brother. There was another person with him, and that person was hurt badly. Now, in all honestly, I did not know if that other person was Matthew, as Angelina said he was, or if it was Daniel who was the one that was hurt, and Matthew was doing the driving. I suspect it was Daniel, though. So that would be my assumption on that.

Her parents? No idea, so I put her story about them on the shelf until later facts could provide me with something tangible. Anthony? Also no idea. This whole family feud thing, nada.

Her story about having to be back home in three days, which oddly coincided with how much time I figured it would take me to get there was quite possible, but still... no evidence that it was true, so I tossed it out.

Too many holes in the fabric. When I get that many holes, I toss out everything that has a hole and just hold the fabric that is whole. If you know what I mean.

In fact, I decided to toss out everything except what I knew to be true. I was driving a rather odd young woman from Trinidad to Oregon because... Because I felt it was the right thing to do.

When I met her, she had a conversation on my cell phone with a man who did not speak to her in English. Her brother? I don't know. Was his name Daniel? I don't know. Toss those two things out. I may hit redial on that number and see where it leads me, but later, when she's asleep.

I know what I saw when I was out on the soular winds. Very strong, and I'm talking major league attachments to her from people with incredible ability. You don't shine that big or carry that heavy a thread if you are just some normal schmo.

Part of what made her story about the family in New York suspect is that I did not see any major attachment to her from the East. Small stuff, indications that she was being thought of, maybe even being actively searched for, but nobody with the strength of the ability she was telling me they had.

There may be a reason for this. The family may have hired some normal goons to come looking for her. Folks with no special ability other than to snatch and grab or possibly kill without guilt. That way the New Yorkers could appear fairly innocent in the eyes of Angelina's family because if someone in her family could see like I could, the New Yorkers would have tossed up some sort of psychic shielding and would be invisible to the radar.

I've seen that done. Heck, I've done it myself. I just wrap myself up tighter than normal, pull in all my strings and don't let anything dangle outside for the lions to nibble on.

So, not having any evidence that this New York family even exists, I toss them out. There are times when ignorance is bliss, and having made the decision that all I had to do was drive her to Oregon, and avoid whoever was looking for her, made me incredibly blissful. To admit one's own ignorance is the beginning of wisdom, some smart person or other once said.

My mood lifted, thanks in a large part to Bishop's castle, and also to the reasoning ability that I got from my father. Things were all right, because there were not enough facts to indicate that they were not all right. All I was doing was driving to see the Vortex in Oregon, and I picked up a hitchhiker who needed to be back home in three days. Everyday, normal stuff.

The air was clear, the sky was blue, the clouds were white. It was a perfect Colorado day as I turned off of 165 and onto 95. When we got to the end of 95, where it merged with 69, I stopped at Westcliff for gas and rest stop. Angelina went to the bathroom and I pumped. Then I went to the restroom and bought a snickers bar. And back on the road. Everyday, normal stuff.

Angelina and I talked a lot. Just normal everyday sort of things that people talk about.

Was she a student? Why, yes, she was, at the university in Eugene.

What was she studying? Physics, which impressed me. My father was a physics and engineering major with a minor in chemistry. She wasn't sure if she liked physics, so she was considering changing over to Languages.

Does she have any hobbies? Yes, she likes horseback riding and writing poetry and a little art.

Her favorite food is Italian, but she secretly craves Mexican. She worries about her weight, especially since Anthony likes thin women. Was growing up with four brothers hard? Not really. They spent most of their time at their studies, and they all adored her.

I didn't tell her much about me. I don't believe that it's anybody's business what my life is like, unless they intend to stick around for a while. Once I dropped Angelina off in Oregon, then I had no plan to ever see her again. Such is life. People come, and people go.

It was actually very relaxing, talking to a young person about their hopes and dreams and consciously steering away from anything having to do with the end of the world. We drove the distance from Westcliff to Montrose, a four hour trip, talking about nothing in particular, except oohing and aawwing over the scenery, and there was a lot of scenery. I would have to say that if Colorado has anything, it's scenery. Outside of Montrose, and just past Gunnison, there were some scenes that were simply otherworldly, and I'm not talking about out of body experience, either. Breath taking beauty that made me glad there was a little red car somewhere else that had caused me to take this detour.

Generally, my driving is straight forward, as in, what's the fastest way to get there, and what's the fastest way back. That's when I'm by myself or my brother and I take our semi-annual guilt trip to see our mother in Indiana. But driving with Angelina was a joy, seeing her face light up and hearing her laughter at every new sight. She was what I had always expected a child to be like, and it lifted my heart and spirit.

Which, of course, is a dangerous thing to me. She was just a passenger going from point A to point B. Any attachment I felt to her would have to stop the moment she stepped out of my van and I left her in the rear view mirror. I simply could not afford, and my heart could not afford, to feel anything other than friendly feelings that end at goodbye.

It doesn't pay to get attached to someone like that. They always tend to leave you either physically or emotionally, and there you are, hugging yourself to sleep at night, needing the touch of another human being, even if it's just you, because you can't get it anywhere else. Of course, I could be wrong. But I'm not.

Montrose is a medium sized city. It's about the same size as my Oklahoma home town, Broken Arrow, with not quite sixteen thousand people. There is quite a bit of agriculture from what I saw, primarily due to the Gunnison Tunnel, a seven mile long aqueduct which ports water from the Gunnison River. The Gunnison Tunnel was build around the turn of the century. I mean the 1900's, not the 2000's. President Taft dedicated the project in 1909.

It has a wide Main Street, four lane and divided by pretty islands that are kept up nicely by the city parks and recreations department there. It hosts a good sized airport and a fair hospital.

All this I read from an information packet while we were eating dinner at the Denny's in Montrose, just south of town and highway 50, about a mile down Highway 550. It had been something like ten years since I ate at a Denny's, and so I decided that was where we were going to stop for dinner. It's not that I love Denny's. In fact, it's pretty much like any other food joint. It's just that Denny's reminds me of happier times, when there was more in my life than just me. Not that I'm not happy, mind you. There was just more... sharing.

There was one of those big distance maps in the Denny's. It told me that there was bout twelve hundred miles to where I was wanting to be, which was close to Grant's Pass, Oregon. Since this was day two of a three day deadline, I decided that it was time to crash. Regardless of what part of her story may be true or not, she believed she had to be back in three days.

If we stayed in Montrose over night, we could make it to Winnemucca or Elko, Nevada in about ten hours, spend the night, and then straight, or as straight as the road would take us, to the tiny town of Gold Hill, Oregon, where the Vortex was. From there, her family could come and pick her up as far as I cared. I would be damned if I was going to miss the Vortex because of this little detour.

I booked us a room at the Holiday Inn Express, just a bit North from the Denny's. The rooms were small, but had cable and a shower. And two bed in our room. That was a good thing, because Angelina was looking wasted. I don't think she had slept the night before, watching me while I has having my episode.

I watched her flop backwards onto the bed, close her eyes and she sighed mightily.

"Ah!" she sighed. "This is what heaven must feel like!" She opened one eye and looked at me. "Are you going to stay up very long?"

"Angelina," I said, "it's only seven thirty, and I don't tend to go to sleep until sometime after midnight." I picked up my jacket, since the temperature had dropped to below forty, and walked to the door. "Tell you what, you sleep, watch television, whatever you want to do. I'm going out to smoke, or just walk around and get a feel for the place."

She propped herself up on her elbows. "Are you going to be far-seeing?" A look of worry crossed her face. "Because if you are, I think you need to have someone nearby."

"No," I said from the door. "I'm not going do be doing any of that stuff. I don't even want to think about it. I'm just going out, smoke a cigarette, find a pub or something and just be for a while. Remember, I started this trip out by myself. I need some me time."

She developed an incredible pout and nodded sadly. "I understand, Chester. I imagine it has been quite a change from what you had planned."

She had no idea. "Look," I said to her as kindly as I could, "don't pout, there's no reason to. You're probably tired enough that you'll be asleep in half an hour and won't even notice that I'm not here."

She sighed again. "I suppose you're right. I didn't sleep at all last night."

"Yeah," I said. "I didn't think so." I let myself out, slapped my pocket to make sure I had the card key, and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the room.

The night air, regardless of where I am, is always full of mystery and majesty. I can stand and look up at the sky and marvel for hours at all the life that is hidden in the darkness above me. Oh, I don't know if there is life on other planets. I suspect there is, but I don't know. The life I'm talking about is the pure interaction of all the... stuff... that's up there. It takes my breath away and makes me feel like I'm ten years old again.

I walked to the little patio area the motel had and sat, listening to the traffic as it zipped by going wherever they were going, seeing the lights of the cars, the lights of Montrose and smelling the air.

There was a little pub, just down the road a bit, but not right now. I don't like bars and pubs as a rule, but I do occasionally go to one for the company. I think that's what was going through my mind at that time. I missed my friends and a bar or a pub would bring them closer to me. I know that if they had been with me, then this would have been a grand adventure, on the scale of swashbucklers. Didn't matter if it really was or not. We would have made it like that.

Instead of a beer, I opted for a Pepsi from the machine in the lobby, popping the top as I walked back to the tiny patio. The Pepsi was better for me anyway, considering that beer would cause me to be less focused. I might do something stupider than I already was.

I sat on the patio chair, just letting the night pick me up and carry me away, and that was when I felt the tickle. It comes on like the feeling you get when you just know that someone is looking at you, and you have not turned around to look at them. That prickling of the hairs at the back of your neck, that odd tenseness between your shoulder blades. A breeze that isn't there. That's what it feels like. Like someone is watching.

I don't like this stuff, I think I've said that before. It's a big pain in the ass, and I wish I had never been born into it. I don't know what it was that caused this sort of genetic abnormality or whatever it is, but I'd sure like to find out.

My brother James had the same sort of thing, except he could manipulate magnetic fields. He could stand at a pin ball machine for hours and just play his little quarter out. Video games did the same thing for him. I watched him walk away from some console game after an hour of playing. He just turned the game over to the kid that was watching, amazed.

Sam has something, but he doesn't talk about it. I tend to think it's luck. I think he's got something that makes him very lucky, though the way he lives, you'd never know it. James and I talked about it, and Sam has something, but we never know what.

We're not sure where it came from. My theory is that it relates to the LSD experiments my father was involved in back in the mid 50's when he was at college. The US Government was trying to keep up with the Russians in their ESP experiments. A Doctor Leary made some discoveries that LSD tended to heighten Extra-sensory Perception in some of the participants, so the government picked some colleges to test a bit further. If some of the students went crazy or died as a result, well, that could be easily explained away. My father lived, and he mentioned the experiments once. That was it.

My theory is, since LSD tends to bond to the DNA of the test subject, that dear old dad passed some of the genetic modifications down to his sons. My oldest brother, Gary, was a half brother, and not a recipient of the double helix from my father. We three, we merry three, got the gift of a life of oddity. I don't blame my dad. I don't blame anyone. It's just the way the chips fall, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. And I don't.

This tickle didn't feel very strong. In fact, it felt like someone's gaze just passed over me, I caught their attention accidentally, and they decided to look at me a bit longer. Nothing ominous, nothing that would set off any alarm bills.

I let them look. I started thinking about my remaining brother, Sam, and hoped he was all right. His son George had turned five. A bright little boy, very curious and very good at destroying anything he put his hands on. Now if we could teach him how to put things back together.

I let my memories drift back to my friends, who were probably doing whatever they were doing on this Sunday night. I checked my watch and it was after eight, so they were probably at the pub, talking and drinking, laughing and having a good time. I wish they were here.

I thought about all sorts of things except the trip. If I even thought about the trip, whoever was looking in on me, if they were searching for us, would see the memory of Angelina, and that would be what we call bad. I did not want anything more than to make the delivery of her and be done with it. No crazy people following behind us, no strange folks poking around in my head, none of it.

I felt the tingle leave me, but it was enough to convince me that I needed to take a bit more protection. I stood up, walked to the front door my motel room and drew a sigil on it.

I don't like ceremonies and I sure don't like ceremonial magicians. There are times, however, when one must pay the piper if they want to keep the rats away. The sigil I drew was one of protection and illusion. To the seeking eye, it would appear as if it were an empty room. Of course, if the seeking eye were to notice there was a sigil there, that would be a whole other thing. But then, the only way the sigil were to be seen is only if it was being looked for, and if the looker knew what it looked like.

I developed my sigil after a very long time, and it is exclusively mine. Since I don't dance in the same circles as witches and wizards, there isn't any record of what it looks like, nor is there likely to be.

I hoped I had done it in time. A sleeping mind is very easy to walk through, and the dreaming mind is like an open travelogue of where that mind has been and what it has seen.

I went back to the patio and waited. I was waiting for anything out of the unusual. The squeal of tires, an unusual voice speaking directly to me, the desire to get up and go somewhere I normally wouldn't go. The thought of the last made me laugh. This whole trip was somewhere I normally wouldn't go.

While I was waiting, I started to create a thing. It was like the whirly-gigs I can take when I go riding on the soular wind, but this one was empty, not containing any sort of information at all. I held onto it in my mind, just in case the lookielou came back.

I didn't have to wait long. Maybe ten, twenty minutes later, I felt the tingle on my neck again. I yawned and stretched, and when I did, I let the whirly-gig go, sailing back up the line of vision of the seeking eye that was looking at me. When the tickled disappeared, so did the whirly.

A yawn is good. A big yawn is better. During a yawn, the brain is flooded with oxygen, your heart rate increases just a bit and your brain stops thinking for just a second. It's true. You might think right before a big yawn, and you might think right after a big yawn, but during? The thoughts that run though any mind during a big yawn are as comprehensible as static.

There would be enough time to whistle the whirly-gig back in the morning and see who it was that came a-looking at me. Peeping Toms just bug me.

Once I was fairly sure that the seeking eye had left me, I finished my Pepsi and walked back toward my room. Stopping at the passenger side of the van, I wedged the empty can behind the front passenger tire. Yeah, I'm a bit paranoid. If someone moves the van, I'll know it by the placement of the can. If it's crushed, someone moved it. If it pops out of it's place, then someone got into it. It's a simple thing, but very effective.

I pulled the key card out of my pocket and fumbled it into the door. I remember when a room key was all there was. Then these new fangled things, these key cards, came into being. They're harder to counterfeit, but people are people. If you walk into a hotel lobby, tell them that your key doesn't work, they can make you a new one right there or even loan you the master. Key cards do not mean you are more secure. At least with a key, you can hear the tumblers moving.

I opened the door, and felt the sticky ickyness of the seeking eye. Every peek leaves a residue, if you know what to look for. My sigil works like flypaper. Someone looks at it, I can tell. I can't tell who, but I can tell that someone came a-looking. It's the same principle as the soda can under the tire.

I checked to make sure that the sigil was secure. A needless thing, as a sigil stays until it's owner wipes it, but you never know. Someone may have figured out how to counterfeit sigils.

I closed the door, made my way to my own bed, took off my shirt and shoes and lay back. I laced my fingers together and placed them behind my head, so I could lay on my back and look at the ceiling.

In my very own little cave, back home in Tulsa, I can lay on my back and look at the ceiling any time I want. I let my mind go and drift up, and up and through the apartment above me, and then out into the night air.

From there, I can just drift, and be at peace, until sleep creeps up to me and steals me away. When that happens I first roll onto my left side, left arm extended out, right hand curled under my chin. It's an odd thing, and I don't know why I do it. Sometimes when I lay on my left side, I still do that odd self-hug thing. It's happening more and more rare, though. Usually it's left arm extended, and right hand curled. After a few minutes like that, my mind does some sort of shift and I have to roll onto my right side, with both arms either extended out in front of me, or down towards my knees. When I reach that state, I know that sleep is just a few minutes away.

That night, I lay and let my mind just drift around the room, playing with the spaces between the words of my thoughts, listening to the gentle breathing of Angelina as she slept. She snorts and snores, too, chasing rabbits.

Comments

[capi.livejournal.com]

'My father taught us all, all four of his boys, that dispassionate discourse is the best way to handle a conflict. To discuss the issue without ego, calmly and with proof and validation would win over any disagreement. At the very least, you could agree to disagree, and knowing each other's viewpoints, could accept those opposite viewpoints as belonging to the other person. Regardless of how wrong you might personally think them to be. Different people, different viewpoints."

Now see, once again, not for correction but for discussion. I wish my dad had taught us something like this. What he taught us instead was the Winner is the strongest and the best and the Boss, and the loser is scum and a LOSER and worthless, so you'd better win at any cost, because that is where your value comes from. It took me *years* to overcome this teaching. I had to find the stuff your dad taught you on my own. You started with great advantage here!
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Oooooooo.... i just hate coming to the end every day! *grin*

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

My father was an incredible person. He definitely had it less than perfect points. His ego was a foreshadowing of my ego, large and very hard to deflate. He did give us tools to walk through this world without a chip on our shoulder, though.

The concept of the Platonic Argument was something brought up at the Sunday dinner table when ever one of us kids would make a statement without any basis of proof. "The astronauts never landed on the moon" for example. The whole table would enter the discussion, and it was up to each and everyone of the participants to speak their mind and prove their points. It led to some lively discussions and some pretty funny moments.

My dad was pretty neat. I miss him, but I also have no illusion that he was perfect. I remember him mostly being gone.