Phrases From SONG Dialogues Come To Mind

The general idea behind the books of SONG is the survival of families, nations, cultures in the face of what seem to be impossible odds.

Ringing in my ears are echoes of words long ago spoken - 

What are you going to do about it?

It's coming - you can't stop it.

Your ways are out-dated.

Comply or die.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

WE SAY NO.

Draft: Here Come The Young Ones

The family gathered at the stage station leans forward and twists as though choreographed.

Approaching hooves are tattooing a rapid march from down the street of this dusty small western town.

Every window and doorway along the street holds heads that also lean and twist in time with the family.

Someone is coming to town on the stage and they are almost here.

Little red-headed Rua pokes her husband Dothann.

‘What?’

‘How will we know them?’

‘For pete’s sake Rua. We’ll know them.’

‘How? How will they know us?’

‘Think about it, Rua. We know things. So do they. How could we NOT know each other?’

‘We don’t even know what they look like.’

‘Well, we’re about to find out, aren’t we? Here comes the stage.’

The leaners and twisters leave their windows and doorways as the stage passes and follow it down the street. The leaners and twisters from the other end of the eight block street stop leaning and twisting and head toward the stage station.

The ones following the stage get a mite dusty but they don’t care at the moment. Their curiosity is compelling and over-rules their common sense.

The family in front of the stage station stops leaning and twisting and straightens itself into neat rows, blanking faces so that a person could not possibly guess what thoughts might be moving around inside of those heads.

Centered in the back row is big, blond, copper-eyed Danann with his look-alike (but with green eyes) grandson Brann beside him, flanked by the two next largest members of the group – Thann and Kalann both with dark hair and eyes.

Alongside of their husbands are Sass standing next to Thann and Aine next to Kalann.

In front of them are Danann’s little wife Sidhelagh with Brann’s wife Andras, flanked by the couple Caileen and Talorc.

In front of them are Alianora and Drustann with Diann and Corrbed to each side of them.

In front of these four are Rua and Dothann.

In front of everyone is the smallest of the bunch, the elder Mamm.

Off to one side is Merri standing alone, watching the whole street with keen eyes.

The eighteen of them stand in silence, waiting. That they form an imposing triangle might or might not have registered with them. It registers with everyone else. Familiar as the sight has become to the rest of this small town, it is still intimidating when this family gathers itself and makes themselves into their triangle.

That there is something odd about their collective self as well as about them as individuals isn’t generally overly noticeable … but when they show up and stand shoulder to shoulder like this people definitely notice and pay attention.

Something is about to happen and the town turns out full force to find out what it is. This family never gets themselves into this formation for no good reason, as the town has already found out.

Trotting up to the stage station, the horses pulling the stage stop and seem to take one last deep breath before dropping their heads in fatigue.

The horses tethered alongside the stage … well … they immediately give little tugs that disconnect them from their tethers. Two of them go to the doors on either side of the stage and without further ado nimble mouths and teeth open the doors.

Before the occupants of the stage can emerge, the four horses neigh loud enough to wake up anyone who might have been sleeping (although nobody is as everyone is in the street by now) and rear.

They’ve already gotten everyone’s attention without the theatrics, but earn themselves a hearty round of applause. Bowing to their audience, the matching set of four tall perfectly proportioned silver horses regally nod their heads at all and sundry in acknowledgement, restless eyes taking in every detail as they nod in all directions. They are royalty and even though the United States of America doesn’t recognize royalty, these citizens know what they are seeing.

Having allowed the horses their introductory moment, the four young people make their own entrance, stepping from the stage with grace and finesse.

Three girls and a boy stand before the stage station, poised and silent.

For a long long time that silence isn’t broken as each pair of eyes in turn locks gazes with each and all of the eighteen gathered family members, hold them for various lengths of time, and move on to the next.

About the time the townsfolk are starting to yawn, Mamm the Elder’s face produces the most brilliant smile anyone has ever seen, so bright it seems to back the shadows right off the whole street.

Stepping forward, the little lady extends her hands to the four Younglings who have stepped off the stage.

‘Welcome!’

That is all she says, or at least all anyone hears, as the four tall young people have her surrounded and enclosed among them before the word is even out of her mouth.

Dothann pokes Rua as the rest of the family remains silent and still, no expressions on their faces.

‘See Rua? Tell me you don’t know them!’

‘Fine. Of course I know them. Those two red-heads are Marra and Mamm the Younger although I couldn’t tell you which is which. That blonde gal is Soarsa and that dark-haired kid is Colum. They’re obviously kin, look at them with Mamm! You’d think they’d known her for all of the eleven years of their lives.’

The stage driver breaks the spell with an, ‘Ahem!’ and a significant look at Danann and Brann while he points to the boxes and trunks fastened to the top of the stage.

‘Oh. Sorry Brawny. We’ll get those off there and you can get your horses taken care of.’

And so the two big men casually take the trunks and boxes down like they don’t weigh more than three ounces apiece (which the stage driver knows is NOT the case since he himself struggled to get them up there) and set them off to one side close to Merri.

Being as the four Younglings still have Mamm surrounded and are soaking her with tears, Brann and Danann, followed closely by the still-suspicious tall silver horses, walk up to the huddled little group and unceremoniously lift the two tall (but not nearly as tall as Danann and Brann) red-headed girls away from Mamm the Elder and lift them way up over their heads, starting to spin like tops.

The two girls automatically arch their backs and fling out their arms to maintain their balance and let out with a couple of surprisingly musical squawks that sound a lot like quacks.

When the two big blond men cut loose with their deep belly laughs there’s no stopping what happens next.

Those two, when they laugh, make everyone in the vicinity laugh with them. It’s a sort of magical chain reaction and the whole town cracks up laughing while the bulk of the family finally breaks their silent stillness and tromps over to welcome the additions to their family.

Thann, who is as big as Danann and Brann only dark instead of blond, lifts Soarsa over his head so that the new Youngling girls are all three flying in circles quacking to beat the band.

The four tall silver horses are watching the whole spectacle in silence, for perhaps the first time in their lives their attention wholly on what’s going on instead of their eyes constantly roving.

While all this quacking and laughing is going on, Dothann brings a buckboard from beside the stage station. Talorc, Kalann, Drustann, and Corrbed lift and load the heavy trunks and boxes onto it as easily as Danann and Brann had gotten them off the stage, which makes the stage driver pause his laughter for a moment and wonder about his own strength. He’d found those same trunks and boxes almost impossible to manage.

The four tall silver horses nudge dark-haired Colum, who quickly mounts the stallion of the bunch and looks at his new-found family.

‘Which way are we going?’

Danann, Thann, and Brann lead the way, quacking young girls still aloft, down the street a couple of blocks and then down a side street another couple of blocks to Mamm the Elder’s little house.

The buckboard follows them, Colum and the silvers follow the buckboard, and everyone else marches along behind them, waggling their backsides merrily to the delighted entertainment of the townsfolk.

Unseen by any except for the Younglings, a very small figure dressed in brown and green rides atop the collection of trunks and boxes. He is perhaps two feet tall (at the moment) and laughing as merrily as everyone else although only the Younglings can hear his piping laughter. A time or two he stands on the trunks and boxes and dances a jaunty little jig, with waggles and quacks of his own.

Watching him from behind, Colum grins and murmurs, ‘Home, Brownling. We’re going home.’

The dancing Brownie of course hears, turns around, adds a few agile leaps and flips to his dance, and looks to Colum as he at last stands still and clasps his hands over his head in victory.

1)    Mamm the Elder

2)    Danann

3)    Sidhelagh

4)    Alianora

5)    Drustann

6)    Sass

7)    Thann

8)    Caileen

9)    Talorc

10) Aine

11) Kalann

12) Merri

13) Corrbed

14) Diann

15) Dothann

16) Rua

17) Brann

18) Andras

19) Colum

20) Saorsa

21) Mamm the Younger

22) Marra

23) Brownling

24) The Silvers

word count 1591

One Thousand Words From A Life I Once Lived

He was positive that he had his next wife in the palm of his hand and threw it in my face how much better she was than I was, in every possible way …

He wasn’t INFJ.

I was.

So, although he virulently (and violently) hated me, and she despised me, I told him the truth.

Come to think of it, maybe it was because I was so hated and despised that I told him the truth.

‘She doesn’t want to marry you. She just wants a playmate for a while. You’re married and she knows it. You’re cheating on your wife with her and she knows that too. She won’t marry you.’

He argued, of course.

I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could.

‘There’s only one way to find out.’

The rest of my life depended on his response. If he believed the truth and didn’t divorce me so that he’d be free to marry her, to prove to her that he loved her more than he did me and our daughters and was serious about marrying her, my life might be short indeed. He’d already almost killed me more than once.

If he refused the truth, he might still kill me but I’d at least have a chance to be free for a while first. I could take the girls and run for it if he divorced me.

So … angry, sure I was lying in order to hurt him, off he went to file for divorce.

It didn’t take long. We didn’t have much of anything to speak of, I had things lined up for my return to college, and about the time the divorce came through so did the clearance for me and the girls to move into family housing on campus.

We had tried this route twice before.

Once the girls went with me for a summer school session and stayed part of that summer with me in my dorm, part of it with his family until I went and got them and kept them with me on campus.

The second time we had gotten an apartment off campus and for the first time I took out student loans as there was no way he was going to help in any way. That was the time I got myself into counseling, was reassured that indeed I was NOT the crazy woman he’d constantly drilled into my head that I was, and found encouragement in a support group for battered women.

Yeh.

That backfired in a big way when one of our group was murdered, along with her children, by her abuser. We knew where he was, as opposed to never being altogether sure where any of the rest of our men were at any given time. He was in jail; she was the only one of all of us who walked free and confident.

That was before we got some laws changed.

They never notified her when they turned him loose.

Convinced that I would be safer knowing where mine was than never being sure he wouldn’t sneak up on me and the girls and do the same, I went back to him. Again. At least I would know where he was.

So back I went.

Things had changed.

He told me when he found out I was right about his girlfriend. Right all the way down the line. Right all along.

He wanted us to use our divorce as a starting over point and I encouraged him to believe that it could be exactly that for us.

I did not tell him that this starting over point would be where our paths diverged and we would be starting over in different directions.

This time I had help.

This time I had a long term plan.

This time I had some community support.

This time when I left to go back to school, I wasn’t coming back.

Ever.

Not that I told him that.

Better safe than sorry.

Let him be on his best behavior while he tried to woo me back.

When he decided to leave the career that had gotten him nowhere, and the town that had not given him his proper due (especially when the truth finally came out) the girls and I had already found Steve and moved halfway across the country.

When he was on his way to pick up the girls for a visit I notified my local sheriff and was told to shoot him if he came to my door. Appalled, I said I couldn’t do that. ‘Well then, throw rocks at him before he gets to the door.’

He was afraid of the mountains, something deep and visceral in him was truly terrified of the mountains. At ten thousand feet up I was as safe from him as I could get.

For his part, he chose my go-to place, the college town I’d returned to in every emergency of my life, to resettle himself with the trophy bride who remained married to him just long enough for him to pay for her advanced education and to be able to take him for all he was worth when she left with someone her own age.

There is, of course, much more to this story than I’m putting down here. Perhaps one day I will tell the rest of the story but for the moment this will have to suffice.

My points here are several.

First, if an INFJ tells you a truth about someone, believe them even if you are convinced otherwise.

Second, when you need to do something you have to use all of the resources at your disposal, including your instincts. And subterfuge if need be.

Third, if laws need changing you have to do your bit to get them changed.

Fourth, believe this: ‘Vengeance is Mine saith the Lord.’ Call it karma if you want. Call it the Universe restoring Balance. Regardless of what label you choose, do your bit and then just step back.

And Into The Woods I Go ...

Another Brian Williams - John Muir winning combination!

Colorado 101 : Sunset Time Into Silhouette Time on 26 July 2018

Late this afternoon I did NOT go straight home from the store after I got my Rocky Ford Cantaloupe.

Nope.

I was going to, truly I was.

But ... y'know ...

Sometimes ya just gotta do what ya gotta do.

Yep.

Filled my vehicle's tank with gas and headed South on 101.

The place my great-grandparents homesteaded is down that way, but that's not where I was going as I don't have a big tough pickup truck.

Further south, past where the pavement ends, are some pretty awesome rock formations, the broken lands filled with scenery straight out of the old Westerns.

That's not where I was going, either.

I was just headed out on the Ranch Road to look for some sage and to see if I could locate some of the plants that grow those little round gourds that are about the size of baseballs or tennis balls.

I didn't get very far because we've had some gully-washers just lately (storms that drop heavy rain pretty fast and are often the cause of flash floods) and sure enough a gully was washed out a couple three miles onto the Ranch Road. I might have made it past that spot, but it looked iffy to me - and I didn't want to get stuck on the other side of it if it got worse (all I had along to eat was my cantaloupe, you know) - so I backed up along the Ranch Road until I got to a safe place to turn around.

Back to 101 I went, but back to town I did not go.

Nope.

Headed south on 101 to where the pavement ends.

The pavement's end is toward the bottom of this photo, the part of the road that's a little darker.

What with one thing and another I figured that I'd best stay on the pavement.

And so I did, for the most part.

Taking my own sweet time as the sunset hours approached, stops along the way back to town were frequent (sometimes only ten yards down the road at a time) and photos many.

Here are a few.

Minutes apart ... 

There truly is no light quite like sunset light.

A few minutes later looking the other direction ...

A few minutes later ... 

And the next few minutes take us from sunset time to silhouette time ... 

Meanwhile, in the east ... 

West ... 

East ... 

And back to the west ...

The east becomes even softer ... 

The west begins to relax ...

While the moon rides the coming night back to town ...

A Bit About Our Characters

The fictional Characters of SONG are the cultural and intellectual forerunners of the freedom-loving Peoples of today.

These interlocked circles represent the Legacy they inherited, the Legacy they have passed on to us generation after generation after generation.

Writing about this fictional family as it grows, getting to know the Characters, it's impossible to not realize the connection between those generations and our own. All around me, every day, I run into people I've never met before and often blink and say to myself, "Here is an Alianora," or "That's a Danann if ever I met one," or "What the heck, there's a Sass!" I have met in the flesh many of the current generations of the Characters of SONG. Which makes me smile because we are living proof that they succeeded in protecting and preserving for us that Legacy.

They lived, fought, and died protecting OUR freedoms, because we are their Future.

Now it's our turn.

As an American I know full well where this story line is taking me - but never EVER do I forget, as the lineages first spread out and then reunite, where those lineages began, where they have gone, what other lineages have added their strengths along the way, and where all of those lineages now are ... which is not solely America by a long shot.

Every freedom-loving person in our world who is ready, willing, and able to plant their feet, take their stand, and hold their line shares something with the Characters of SONG. 

Faith

Family

Friendship

Freedom

Future

If you recognize what those words mean, you are a Keeper of the Legacy.

What you Choose to do about that is entirely your Choice.