Love Is....

[dolly]

unconditional, blind and free.
PEACE dolly

[austintorn@aol.com]

Although the weed flowers marking Old Autumn’s last tracks were still flourishing, heavy snow flurries threatened to bring a white thanksgiving and either complicate the holiday or add to its romance.

Meanwhile, Peter pulled up to his terminal, brought up his 30,000 line computer program, and opened the patient for surgery, as he liked to think of it. Working swiftly from a red inked printout marked during coffee hour, he clamped off capillaries, redid their interfaces, and bloodlessly sealed them shut again, although these were only preparatory and minor repairs in auxiliary areas. Next, the main arteries had to be incised, and therefore it was no longer possible to open and unblock the incursions in sequence, since indirect ramifications and side concerns quickly arose and wildly flared, as fleeting thoughts, when one thing led to another, thereby requiring immediate attendance lest, they, in the formless impressionism of the art of computer programming, fade to vague remembrance and reappear later, always at an inopportune time, as defects known as bugs. The phone rang while Peter was juggling these evaporating images and so he had to ignore it; but, no matter, for PhoneMail would record the call.

Twenty minutes later Peter had sutured the incisions and readied a compile and regression test which would either attest to the quality of the operation or reveal its fatal errors and necessitate the revitalization of the patient or, at worst, require a restoration to preoperative health from a backup file. During these tests Peter played back the phone call and heard Angelina’s voice: “It’s snowing, Peter. Oh, and please bring wine for our Thanksgiving dinner tonight. Bye.” The computer tests showed zero defects, and so Peter, now fully back to earth, walked to the window down the hall and watched the snow squall advancing down the mountainside across the river.

This being the eve of a holiday, workers would be let off early, and so, Peter, anticipating this and needing an edge on the snowfall, quickly departed from the corporation, vanishing among the flakes. Although the snowstorm was in full force, the low center of gravity of the Honda Prelude prevailed and his radial tires were the first to chew the unsullied snow.

Three heavy inches had already fallen by the time Peter had bought the wine, changed into his winter clothes, and rolled into Rhinecliff where he parked and elatedly began the long walk to the sandstone farmhouse. Some flowers of the fall’s second spring still poked their heads above the white death wrap that was being drawn around them, and Peter’s brain stuttered in the acceptance of the incongruity of the scene, his vision wavering in the blurred demarcation of the seasons. This then, he knew, was the smothering of the earth’s last warm sweet odours, the sad finale of the perpetual-flowering-carnations, the blanching of the still green and grassy banks of the stream—summer’s last refuge. Even the rose d’amour that he carried for Angelina had turned from red to pink with the snow’s ivory dusting. As if to mourn for the fallen fragrances of man and flower, Peter stopped in the old cemetery and picked a marigold, one that was still vital—one that only yesterday had thrived in the warm heart of a tombstone—and, as he inhaled its odour, a thousand memories reoccurred and he was immediately given back his youth, and the energy that would carry him well through life’s final frost. Rounding the other side of the gravestone, he read it, after wiping off the snow:

The watch fire fades, the final curtain falls,
The dust within me to the earth recalls.
No talk of me from thee beyond the veil;
My bird of time has flown; this life is all.

Moving on, Peter had to watch his footing, but now and then enjoyed an intentional slide down an unwalkable slope, for even mere existence had now become a pleasure.

Angelina felt within her bones the onset of a cold winter, as she watched the blizzard out the window and prepared the cranberries and the stuffing. The snowstorm was cleansing the world, truly laying on it a blanket of serenity. As she put the broccoli into the wood stove, she reflected on the snowfall and knew that it was nature’s way of getting people to stay in and enjoy the home from which living warmth emanated. The inner child in her was excited at the prospect of throwing snowballs and sledding down the big hill, not to mention the building of a snow fort, which the little boy in Peter would no doubt dream of even more so. She put the soup on the fire, feeling warm in her country kitchen as love and anticipation mixed into the glow of the new season. She loved to cook for this man who gave her so much time and appreciation. This was a good life of laughing and living and touching. It had been so long since someone had made her laugh. For this a duck would be served, along with potatoes, corn, broccoli, and greens fresh from the country soil. She lit the candles and placed them on the table.

Out in the snow squall, Peter knew the way, one that he had often found even in the moonless dark, and the steady exertion kept the cold away as he walked slowly and without alarm, for they both knew that he’d be a little late. Now he again flew like Pegasus, as in his dreams, and passed, like Santa’s elf, over the rooftops in the gale, sweeping on through the valleys with the gusts, striving ever onward into the blinding tempest, often by touch and feel alone. Peter could feel the bulk of the house out there among the streaking shadows. Angelina blinked the new electric lights on and off a few times and called to him out the door as she searched, like some winter firefly, for the beacon of his reply. Appearing out of the whiteness like a ghost made flesh, Peter shook off the large flakes of snow on the porch and embraced her, youth again creeping across their faces as they kissed.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I have surprise for you, Peter. I’ll show you after dinner. It’s a work of art—my art.”

Peter uncorked the wine, which turned out to be champagne, and, although they seldom drank, it flowed and flowed in thanks this evening as they feasted on the duck.

[melanie]

The Eternal Love Story

We Lose Our Self

We Find Our Self

We LOVE Our Self

[austintorn@aol.com]

It was in ‘60, ‘61, or thereabouts, at age 13, that we strolled through the woods behind Karen’s house and found a small clearing snug with trees all around it, with a picnic table, a space somehow perfectly preserved from even its older days.

We liked these enclosed spaces as much as those of treehouses and such.

The dusk was yet viable in its embers and a good enough moon was up to grant the enchanted lighting. The place spoke volumes of intimacy from the summation of its whisperings.

Worries in those days seemed to be less than those of now. No problem.

I went back there some months ago. Her presence, psychologically, was still there, as well as the place being just the same. It is a magical island standing still amid the entropy ever marching on elsewhere.

[austintorn@aol.com]