etikser

on a warm summer’s evening . . . 4

July 26, 2024July 26, 2024 etikser

I killed something the other night. Something I’d call a thousand-legger. A centipede? A millipede? I have no idea. It was late at night, and my vision detected movement along the floorboard. A centipede or a millipede…no matter. It was moving quickly, with lots of legs, and it was creepy. I knew I had to be swift, firm, and aggressive, and I had to completely kill this menacing bug if I intended to sleep. No half-smacks. It was standing still (all those legs motionless), and this was my chance. I had to move without hesitation. Like really, there I was, the day’s chores complete, teeth brushed and flossed, and I grabbed the weapon of choice (a wad of tissue). I stood there (shoeless), it stood there (with all those legs), both of us poised, ready. I’d already seen it move, and I knew I had to bring my A-game. I moved quickly, grabbed it and squeezed, and breathed a sigh of relief. The bug was more or less crushed in my wad of tissue. Emphasis on ‘more or less’.

A brief moment of examination …

And then it moved … what was left of it moved. Yikes! This half-dead bug moved enough to escape the tissue and brush its creepy legs against my finger. I felt it…tickling my finger!! Eeech, creepy, creepy, creepy!!

My instincts kicked in. Without pause, I moved, and what was left of the thousand-legger dropped off my finger into the water, which, woosh, swiftly washed it away.

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On a warm summer’s evening … simple words … my favorite kind of words … packed with age-old nuance and memories.
Credit: The Gambler, performed by Kenny Rogers (1978), written by Don Schlitz.

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© Etikser. All Rights Reserved.
This is not the actual insect involved, but an outdoor bug.
All photos and images here are my own and may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.
Please visit my other blog, Clover & Ivy, https://cloverandivy.wordpress.com,
where I post mostly nature photos.

kids

on a warm summer’s evening . . . 3

July 18, 2024July 18, 2024 etikser

I don’t know why I was running. Maybe I needed to get ‘home free’. Back to ‘base’. Maybe part of Hide n Seek. It was part of some game, and it was dark out. When I was a kid, I thought I was a fast runner (doubtful), and that thought was in my head as I ran down the sidewalk. I can remember that precise thought and I can still envision the cracks in the sidewalk, right under the street light. I could find the exact spot today. I don’t think it was the crack in the sidewalk that tripped me up. I think it’s that my upper body was feeling so very confident, it was pulling me faster than my legs could go. In any case, I fell (went flying) down and slid along the sidewalk, like a runner slides into home plate. But this wasn’t a baseball game, and my legs were wearing shorts and sliding along concrete, not the sandy dirt they use to line a baseball diamond. Yeah, my legs got all scratched up, bleeding, a big bloody mess, etc., and it was the end of the evening’s fun for me.

A lifetime ago, since I had that fall, and I think today about summer knees, and how bad my knees are nowadays. Maybe it’s the contrast and the awareness of my current shortcomings that made me write. Things wear out. Knees wear out. But that night, I was so confident I was a great runner, right up to the moment I realized I would, for sure, hit the pavement.

Maybe this one’s a salute to who we were as kids, to the confidence, to the knees, we had as kids. Yeah, on a warm summer’s night, many nights ago.

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© Etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.
Please visit my other blog, Clover & Ivy, https://cloverandivy.wordpress.com.
I post mostly nature photos there.

sunset

on a warm summer’s evening … 2

July 13, 2024July 18, 2024 etikser

Mornings, I look to the tops of the tallest trees while I drink my coffee. I don’t know what I’m looking to see. Clouds and blue skies, I suppose. Circling birds, perhaps … a hawk or crow.

This time of year, fireflies party nightly up there, near the tops of the trees. I looked to the dark sky the other night to see if there were stars, and I saw stars flickering and moving. Not stars, silly me, but fireflies. A dazzling sight, the treetops and fireflies co-mingling with a starry sky.

Tonight, following a day that was hotter than summer days ought to be, and after an early evening rain that fell short of what was needed, the last light of day painted the sky a bright, colorful hue of yellow-gray. It was a noteworthy, beckoning sky, one you couldn’t miss. Then I noticed the house siding was unexpectedly lit with the brightness of the setting sun. An atmosphere that’s unique and embracing, radiant, and at the same time, turning dark. An atmosphere steaming with contradictions and serendipitous possibilities.

Sometimes when I first wake and glance about, inside the confines of the closed shades of my room, I see only the distressing loop of reality and worry. I should know to go outside those shades and look up for the promising possibilities I’d find in the breeze moving around the tops of the trees.

There’s this thing about serendipity, though. It comes as it wishes. You can’t count on serendipity, you can’t look to serendipity. It comes as it will.

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moonlight

on a warm summer’s evening . . . 1

July 6, 2024July 6, 2024 etikser

It was the late end of the day. I was ready to go upstairs, and I was surrounded by darkness, as I’d expect, but for the far left quadrant of the kitchen curtain. It was luminous. Aglow.

A full moon? Somehow I’d missed the growing crescent in the night sky? I don’t think anything has that late-night radiance but the moon. Clouds scatter, and nothing but the full moon reaches down so intensely, down past the distant heavens, past the treetops, ‘cross the window trim, and into my room. It’s like it was waiting there for me … a gentle, benevolent kind of lying- in-wait … a secret, a surprise.

The unremitting strength of spirit.

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On a warm summer’s evening … simple words … my favorite kind of words … packed with age-old nuance and memories. Is there a single one of us who doesn’t hold onto the image of a warm summer’s evening?
Credit: The Gambler, performed by Kenny Rogers (1978), written by Don Schlitz.

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thanks

thanks, wordpress

June 21, 2024 etikser

Hey, folks. Etikser here. Hi to all, and happy summer.

Thanks, WordPress, for fixing my Reader. ‘Cause I can use my Reader again in a way that’s not nearly as tedious. I don’t know the how or the wherefore. I just know I can keep up again, with the bloggers I follow, without scrolling and scrolling needlessly over material I’ve already seen. Don’t know how it happened or how it was fixed, but I very much appreciate the adjustment.

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emotions

lie-la-lie

June 12, 2024June 12, 2024 etikser

Paul Simon wrote the ‘lie la lie’ line as a placeholder, because he didn’t have words at the time for that part of the song. Destiny?!? It’s the part we all remember, no?

Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie

The Boxer. We all know the words. Thank you, Paul Simon, we all know that part. Lie la lie. Over and over. When we get to that part, we all know what it means. It’s like that part of Prince and Purple Rain, when there aren’t any real words and he’s just moaning, oou-oou-oou-oou, still we get what Prince is saying. Maybe it’s the way we remember Prince, the way we hold onto his soul, and that incredible, signature (wonderfully grimacing) guitarwork.

In The Boxer, we all get it. We know what it means. It’s for the boxer in all of us, in each and every one of us. It’s for the boxer who remains after we’re worn down to nothin’. When we’re beaten down to nothin’ and somehow holding on.

Sing: Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie

What’s missing? What’s missing for me? A cold, aged, winter feeling. Even on a warm June evening, it’s the feeling of a cold, dark, bitter winter night. A cold, dark, bitter winter night, and repeating melodic syllables running roughshod over the wordy thoughts in my head. And on and on and on. And some beautiful fingerpickin’ guitar strums to lead me and soothe me, lie, la lie.

We’ve all been there when we’re trying and we’re trying, and we carry the reminders, don’t we?

Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
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The Boxer (1969), written by Paul Simon, recorded by Simon & Garfunkel.

change

yellow flowers

May 19, 2024 etikser

That path still scares me a little. The first time I went there I got scared by a dog’s growl. It sounded like a big dog, and I was alone on one of those narrow, transient dirt paths kids and dog-walkers make through the woods. I didn’t give it a lot of thought, just turned around and exited. A little while later, I got up my nerve and went back again. I didn’t feel up to starting down the path from the other direction. Why? It was a narrow way, and something about going that direction made me uncomfortable. If I were to get to the middle of the woods and cross paths with something that scared me (dogs, foxes, snakes), there wasn’t much room to move to the side. Okay, I was a scaredy cat.

It makes me a little sad to see all the trees down there. It almost looked like there were more trees down than standing. What will it be like in the summer? The brush will grow, and it will seem more like it always looked, I imagine. But all those trees on the ground? So many…like the state of the earth these days. I know they came down naturally, probably with storms, but still…. it’s sad to see all those trees on the ground.

I’m pretty sure I can go back there in June or July, and those tall yellow flowers will be scattered everywhere. I would not take it well if they weren’t. Some days we find ourselves too close to the edge, and it makes everything seem scary. I think I’ll go back in the summer, and those flowers will be there, among the down trees, and they’ll reassure me. Who knew, some silly tall yellow flowers growing in the wild have that kind of power?

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Unrelated: I’ve had difficulties lately using the reader and my ‘list’ to read the bloggers I follow. I’m sure I’ll figure it out, but please be patient if it seems I’ve been absent.

spring

today’s outlook

May 6, 2024May 6, 2024 etikser

This is a photo I’ve taken dozens of times.
It’s the closest I can get to what I’m describing.

It’s a little like when you glance downstairs late at night, and everything is dark. Everything in your full vision, everything that’s both central and peripheral, everything that’s in your soul, it’s all whispers and dark shadows. Dark as the night.

Except that now everything is dazzling bright, and green as a spring day. A full, mature, all-encompassing spring. When I sit at my computer these days and look out over the top of the monitor to what’s outdoors…everything’s the look of spring green. It’s mottled, of course, not one page of flat green construction paper. Patches of dark and bright, and everything in between, shimmering in the breeze. It’s a vision chock-full of spring.

It reminds me of that warm summer day when I went down by the stream, and the water was shining in my eyes in full reflection mode, mirroring the neon dreamy color of all the surrounding shrubs and trees. It reminds me of the time I stood under a weeping willow tree and looked up for comfort to the leafy green strands cascading towards me. A full vision, packed with the wondrous embrace of eternity.

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Uncategorized

grace

March 29, 2024March 29, 2024 etikser

Sometimes I write like grace is right there. Grace, magic, and our souls. It’s there, there, and there. As if we can access it, if we just reach out, and look to the stars scattered among the tops of the trees.

Silly me. Grace isn’t that easy, is it? It’s elusive. It’s the imploring anguish. ‘Please’, and ‘please’, and the most exhausted, begging, pleading words in the world, ‘please’. That’s where the grace lies. It’s a sad, painful place that spills out from the very bottom of our souls. It’s a moment when we walk along the beach, surrounded only by honest desperation. The ebb and flow of infinity, and all we have to offer is truth and a desperate plea. When you don’t know if you need more wine, xanex, or whatever can carry you to the next step.

The stuff of grace.

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