Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge: Day 3…Dream ride

This is Day 3 of the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge.   I was invited to participate by Emilio Pasquale at “Photos by Emilio”. The challenge is  to “post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge”.  

Today’ nominee is Jan Marler Morrill at https://janmorrill.wordpress.com/. Jan’s the author of “The Red Kimono”, a novel about the interment of the Japanese in the US during WWII.  You need to read it.  She also writes haiku and explores various issues on her blog.

Christmas disappeared today

Christmas disappeared today
     D
     O
     W
     N 
into the maw of the truck
   eating the set-out Christmas trees.

Arctic winds swept dry snow
into crunchy scallops
across equally crunchy yards.

A bush outside our window 
scraped it in a manner worthy of Jack Nicholson
    on a horror rampage.

Unprotected heads and hands
squandered heat
faster than a teen with Mom’s credit card.

Tea and coffee were copiously consumed,
furnaces struggled valiantly,
soups and stews bubbled,
and dreams of spring crept in unbidden.

4:37 am

             4:37 am

Drawn-out train whistle
    pulls me rudely from a dream. 
Second punctures hope of returning. 
Third
    farther away
    echoes mockingly.

A rift of time and place

When do you dream?

The Philadelphia traffic finally behind, I head west on a modern-day wagon trail.  The forests are dressed in a variety of tawny colors, a few daring souls flaunting scarlet or gold.  I imagine the pioneers making their ways along narrow paths with nothing but trees in all directions, perhaps some farms here and there, the dirt hard-won in battle with the rocks that in defeat form the stone fences.  Through the magic of the modern, I insert another disc and fall back into the world of the Indians that consumed me on my outward trip.  “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” batters my soul with familiar names and stories, tales of deceit and murder and promises broken and re-broken, of people hunted to their deaths, women and children slaughtered.  Two life styles and value systems on a collision course that doesn’t end well, that highlights greed and a conspicuous lack of honor, themes that echo yet today.  One of the men who tries to help is related to an online friend.  When I hear his name, I scribble it down on the pad I always have for notes and ideas so that I remember to mention it to her.  I wish I knew more about him and those few who dealt in good faith and honor.

Where do you dream?

Thirteen long hours to be filled with…what?  I drive, seeing, alert for traffic and possible situations, yet at the same time traveling through the late 1800’s mostly in the western half of the United States, knowing how it will end yet compelled to keep going.  By the time I surface, I’m back in Indiana, darkness falling literally as well as metaphorically.  Above, in the dark clouds and night ahead, there’s a slender riff, through which a bit of yellow gold shines dimly.  I feel as though I’ve been in two places at one time, emotionally wrung out, as if I’d been, if not a participant, at very least an observer.  I’ve fallen through that slit into another dimension.  Now I need to find how to return.  I need another dream; less nightmare, more joyful.

What fuels your dreams?

A short space of no emotion.  I need something soul-restoring.  I reach for “In Tuscany”, the not-exactly-a-sequel to “Under the Tuscan Sun” and “Bella Tuscany.”  The rift now opens to that mixture of old and new that is Italy.  Stories of olive-picking, of choosing cheeses and wines, of shared, hours-long dinners with friends, of restored homes and restored lives, of laughter and love and family.  Dreams of someone else that call me back.  Heal me. Pull me through the darkness towards home.  Make me want to find my own dreams once again.

Arriving tired, somewhat disoriented from my awake-dreaming, happy from time spent with a daughter and from being home with my husband, I fall in bed after eating and awaken to dreary, sullen skies and pouring rain, to bills and laundry and applesauce-making.

Time for new dreams for a new day.

The house of my heart

The house of my heart has:

• a library, where all my hundreds of books are on shelves so I can see them and easily access them without digging through boxes in the attic. The library has chairs that invite me to curl up and read, plenty of light (both artificial and natural), maybe even a window seat. It will probably have my laptop, a printer, etc…the technological minutia of today’s day-to-day living, a wonderful desk to store interesting pens, pencils and markers and gorgeous paper (plus stamps for things that still will be sent “regular” mail.)

• a porch. A big porch. A place with outdoor furniture where I can sit in the morning with my cup of tea, greet the day (or my neighbors or both), or listen to all the sounds that make up silence in the way that all colors make either white or black, depending if you add all colors of light (which will make white) or all colors of paint (which will make something approaching black.) A place where, if my house is near other people, I can see them, talk to them, invite them over, set food and drink out for them and get to know them.

• a clothesline. I want my clothes to smell like sunshine in the summer and my towels, sheets and pillowcases to invite noses into them. My dryer will appreciate the break. Not convinced of the fun of hanging things out in winter and breaking ice off them, though.

• large windows, suitably insulated, easy to open to welcome in the scents of summer, beautifully framed indoors by some sort of “window treatments” and on the outside, by real shutters that I can reach out and close at night, French-style. Provencal colors would be lovely for them. The sun will pour into the house on sunny days, into every room, nook and cranny.

• a large kitchen that’s the heart of the home, maybe a kitchen-dining room. Either way, I’ll be able to look outside while eating, gazing at the garden, trees, fruit trees and flowers. In the yard of my heart, there will be flowers to bring inside and food to eat. There might be chickens, both for eggs and for their ecological effect. There will also be a kitchen garden outside the patio doors, a patio with a grill, pots filled with herbs, chairs around a table, protected, when needed, by an umbrella.

• ceiling fans in all the rooms, solar panels, skylights, and a solarium as well as a green house. There’s a wood-burning stove that heats much of, or all of, the house. The gutters end in rain barrels and the garden has a drip system. In one corner, you’ll find the compost pile.

• green roofs. Or maybe not, since after having a flat roof with water problems for a time, I swore our next house would have roofs so steep the crampons would be needed to work on them. But green roofs intrigue me as do straw bale homes, adobe homes and homes built partly into a hill.

• if not a basement and attic, then plenty of storage space. A pantry and/or a cellar.

• a dog, probably a rescue pit bull, to act as official welcome-er.

Whatever it has, the house of my heart will be filled with love, friendship, a sense of peace and community, good food, two or three-hour meals with friends and family and the love of God. The house of my heart will be a home as well.

(Thank you for permission to use the lovely photo [on the right] of a Provencal home to Barbara van Zanten-Stolarski  of Europa Photogenica, unique photo tours to unusual places, at www.europaphotogenica.com.)