Today I decided that my lack of interest in anything other than my bellybutton was making me out to be a boring bird, indeed. To remedy that ill feeling, I decided to subscribe to a few blogs, do some research on my FAVORITE haunted/tasty/musical tourist town (Eureka Springs, Arkansas), and catch up with an old chum from high school.
I just can't let this winter be like those recently past....

For Cher

A mother's heart is the April sun
Encouraging young life to grow
at the tempo of God's pleasure.

A father's strength
Is the mountain upon which
the fragile root and thrive.

The Master gathers the most perfect
lillies unto Himself,
for they in their purity
best reflect His glory.

Deposit and Withdrawl, Part 3

"So, what you're saying is that this man, who might not have been a man at all, walked up to you at the teller window, and the last thing you remember is seeing his face...although you don't seem to be able to recall any of his features?" her doctor inquired without trying to conceal his doubtfulness.
"Yes, sir," Jillian said, listening to the tone of her own voice with fascination. She wasn't sure she even believed herself.
Her family physician, Dr. Hindenberg, was a close friend of her father's and often took it upon himself to look after his family -- especially his only daughter. Over the years, he had watched her tranform from a quiet, brilliant young girl with an anarchic riot of reddish hair to a young lady harnessed by the refined manners and ways of a modestly moneyed southern town. Lately, though, he had noted the finest cracks in her manicured facade -- odd things that perhaps a stranger might not notice: her fingernails, normally smooth, squared and painted a shade of unicorns-and-kittens pink, were now startlingly short. If they wore any color at all, it was something ironic -- gold, black, blue. Bruise colors, he mused.
And there was something about the way she smelled. The odor that attatched itself to her clothes and her hair wasn't offputting, exactly.... the best comparison he could make was to the scent of a newly-printed book with gardenias pressed between the pages.
"There.... there was something else...at least I think it could be something else," she suddenly volunteered. The doctor raised a grayed eyebrow.
"Last night, I dreamed that I was walking alongside this beautiful, crystal-clear river. The moss on the riverbank was so soft, I didn't realize I was barefooted until I sat at the base of a huge tree and turned my toes up. Then this boy approached me. I say boy... I mean young man, maybe?" The doctor slowly nodded, absently chewing on the side of his overgrown mustache. "Anyway, the guy gets within three feet of me, reaches up, and pulls a piece of fruit I hadn't noticed off the tree above me..."
"What kind of fruit?"
"An orange. It smelled...." -- she greedily drew the scent of candied air into her lungs -- "like Christmas day."
"And then?" the physician whispered.
"And then... that's it. I woke up feeling like I hadn't felt since the days of Captain Crunch and Thundercats in the morning. Everything in my life, if only for a fleeting moment, felt....solved somehow."
Dr. Hindenburg slowly spun on his heel and turned away from Jillian, nervous that the smirk barely visible beneath his whiskers would give him away. Absently gazing into the warped reflection of his eyes thrown by dented metal of an old paper towel dispenser, he considered his words.
"Jill," he began, "exactly how many cups of coffee do you drink per day?"
"Ohhhh....about two pots' worth."
The doctor lifted an ungroomed eyebrow. "At what point during the day does your coffee consumption cease?"
To his surprise, the intention of his questioning drifted right by Jillian like a clear balloon. "Oh, I might warm up a pot before I settle into bed and watch a movie. It's just so relaxing to have something warm in my tummy before I drift off."
The good doctor picked up a dry pen sporting an advertisement for a drug claiming to treat restless leg syndrome. He tapped the butt of the useless thing on the countertop to an impatient beat. "You know, they recently did a study on coffee drinkers that suggests that those who ingest more than seven cups per day are increasingly prone to..." -- he looked into her face, searching for any sign of rejection before he finished -- "hallucinations. We'd also like to check you for epileptic brain activity."
To his mild surprise, his patient failed to flinch at the arrival of such worrisome news; even her feet, dangling off the edge of the examination table, never broke the rhythm of their playful sway.
"Okay, doc. You're the boss," she said, nonchalantly turning to rifle through her purse. "But tell me, if this episode can somehow be explained away as some caffiene-induced electrical storm up in this rotten melon head of mine, then tell me, what in the Hannah Montana is this?" she exclaimed, tossing a dusty leather-bound book onto the countertop between the two of them.
Dr. Hinderberg leaned in toward the aged tome, examining the oddly fragrant object as if it were bearing fangs and poised to strike. It was older than the oldest book he had ever seen. Why, even the binding was sewn with a thread of some unfamiliar material that looked as thin as a lily petal, yet held the yellowed pages with suprising commitment. He turned it over in his sterile professional hands, whispering to himself the only words imprinted on the cover.
"Occupo fructus. Occupo fructus," he muttered.
"Sounds latin," she said.
"It is."
"Where did you get this?"
"The man who came to the teller window gave it to me."
He offered no other words; the room fell into silence. Jillian faintly heard a child wailing down the hall.
After a few moments of unbearable silence, her tongue escaped her. "So, what does it say?"
"It says.... seize the fruit."

Deposit and Withdrawl, Part 2

A whisp of snakelike smoke wound its way upward from the end of Jillian's half-lit cigarrette. Her eyes followed it involuntarily; for a brief moment, she was nearly convinced that she could hold onto the stream like a beanstalk and be gently carried into the stratosphere. She checked her trembling left hand for beans.
A door behind where she sat on the sidewalk opened, and the familiar sound of scuffling feet rounded where she sat and came to rest next to her. "I didn't know that you smoked," a hestitant voice above her murmured. Jillian took a startled look at the offending object for herself. "Well," she paused, searching. "I didn't, either," punctuating her suprise by grinding the remainder of the cigarette into an old gum stain on the pavement.
"I heard you had a seizure," said her friend Anneliese as she seated herself carefully beside her, careful not to disturb the gaps in her long button-up skirt.
Jillian considered her friend's comment carefully. Had she experienced a seizure? And if so, why didn't she recall anything so seeminlgy traumatic?
"I guess I am what I ate for lunch," she said, desperately trying to make sense of things by saying something nonsensical. "What's that?" Anneliese asked, willing to be diverted from investigating an event that obviously bothered her companion.
"Fried vegetables. With a side of what the crap."

Deposit and Withdrawl, part one

Jillian first mistook the approaching figure for a gathering of startled wild birds whose games were often faintly concealed in the tall weeds hedging the back of the Quaker meeting house next door.

She always found herself physically disoriented when she realized the initial impression of her senses had failed her; and now, watching the approaching figure materialize from what her mind had first believed to be a stirring of frightened wrens was enough to disturb the normally lulling rhythm of her work behind bank teller window.

Like the roll of a breaking wave, the bird-shadow suddenly parted its cover of weeds and, to Jillian's fascination and slight astonishment, move with a manner of ethereal bearing over the rubbled pavement cracks of the parking lot. What on earth....her brain began, as her knees felt the sickened urge to sway.

Suddenly aware of the people around her, she began to realize that she was the sole witness to this event. Her mouth opened in an attempt to communicate; her jaw resisted as if it had never opened before. Her brain screamed in confused protest. The figure drifted closer.

And then she saw him. Her urge to panic was muffled by a paralyzing fascination. His skin was barely translucent and warm-toned, just as the flesh of any living creature, yet a rythmic pulse of pink and gold barely beneath its surface reminded her of wheat fields yielding to a gentle wind.

Until he removed his covering, she did not realize that she had not seen his face.