CHERRY COKE, THE CAPRICIOUS CENTIGRADE, DREAMS OF DEATH, AND YOU CAN’T WREST THE SECRETS A FOREST KEEPS

Now I drink the Cherry Coke from a stolen Captain Morgan class. After the humidity and the flies, mosquitoes, and a hike, the Cherry Coke is like some kind of manna from heaven. It was in the new forest when I started dreaming of the drink and thinking about the cold cans wait in the fridge. They were waiting there due to the kind lady that found them and sent them. May good karma and fortune return two fold to her for her selfless and thoughtful and helpful gesture. As for the glass, I wish I had room, opportunity, and more cargo pants pockets to have taken more. That’s for two reasons. The first being that the eatery we were patronizing at that time was so rude, uncaring, and such, that it leaves a sour taste. Second, it is a great glass, strong, sturdy, actual glass, with a totem pole face to denote something carved from hand; - it has an interesting shape all around, holds a full can of Cherry Coke, and is perhaps my favorite of all glasses currently anyways. Pocks to that restaurant!

Well the weather was wavering from hot and stagnant, sticky, to then cooling down, becoming a bit breezy, letting out some harmless and refreshing drops of rain. I thought it would cool. Then, the wind stopped, and the sun, not a friend exactly for its heat and blinding brightness, came out again, - and so did the mosquitoes who had previously been flown away by the wind. Now, - cool and windy again. Who knows? What changeable times. I notice the broken question mark of the keyboard has fixed itself. Maybe things let alone long enough do sometimes have a way of doing that. It could, on a positive note, be called interesting, this peculiar weather,- hot cold warm sticky breezy ruffled melting oppressive then freed by the better night air and then hot again so much shifting as if a living dream.

Speaking of dreams. There was a long dream about a woman, a relative of sorts, and in the dream news came

that she had died. I was surprised in the dream, and I knew on another level, only later in the dream, that I was dreaming and the dream was harmless and not true (I think), and not a dream of prophesy but rather just a dream. So I wondered at what it could mean. I first thought that the woman had kind of sold her soul without really knowing it, by valuing only money and status, and then got it, - but for a time, and died early, and kind of without being in a state of grace. Then I thought the dream could mean something but similar: that the woman had forsaken compassion and caring in favor of the world, of the secular, of worldly things only,- and so appeared alive, successful, even happy…but was in a larger sense therefore dead, because she was without the true living God and this kind of thing. I also thought of yet another interpretation- that the woman, middle aged, though fickle and rigid views, and  contin8ual silent and verbal bestowal of judgement on other individuals and groups…has become old before her time. I have seen that before in real life more than once.

But in the end, - I let it go as much as possible, - because it could mean nothing or something else altogether.

Before her death, I was trying to attend a concert, a seminar, a learning or entertainment place. I really put my best foot forward as they say. But I told the lady at the ticket counter,- look- even though you have one or two tickets left,- I can’t  enter- I can’t function in there- it’s too crowded,- it’s not for me,- this is not going to work. And there were other halls,- perhaps three or four or five in total,- and none worked for me, none were for me,- and I ended up leaving,- being perpetually on the outside, without a group, niche, so on and so forth. Though a bit perplexed and a bit disappointed, I took it in stride and moved on.

Then the forest. Which as a new forest. The forest at its worst is like a saviour- no people, a different rhythm, This one I don’t know. Its closer, and lots of people go there, - there is room, many paths. Only one person in a raincoat and hat and all protected was around that I saw this first time- and myself, with no insect spray, in shorts and t-shirt,- and forgetting hat in vehicle- comfortable, but also more vulnerable I was. But off we went, - here and there, - but being conservative- keeping it under an hour. I don’t know yet. It’s like a first or second date or something- difficult to tell. There didn’t seem to be anything overly charming, enthralling, interesting, and I struggled to find photographs of even a few berries or an acorn. But, - though there is not a wonderful waterfall and ancient boulders, - indigenous hieroglyphs’ and secreted caverns, - I know enough to know that a forest, woodland, pathways, like a woman, - does not give her secrets away so easily and that every place, just as perhaps every person, has secrets. Going down a long path one more time, - I see there is a little small pond, quite hidden, - and one of the dogs spots it and runs over to check it out. Ah, - I think, - there are things here, just as there are things other places. Because I managed to still myself inside and slow my stride, - I start to notice a mushroom, two red spiders, a moss covered log wonderful that I didn’t see while passing it the first time. Soft eyes not hard eyes. Observation, - that is the thing. But all in all I and we have to go.

I look up and then the thunder sounds far away but it sounds nevertheless. We leave, having called it a morning, having at least met the new forest.

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