Day: May 8, 2023

So Alive

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RDP Monday: LUSH

Hemlock Conium maculatum flowers, Boultham Moor, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK.
Photographer: Mick Talbot

By the end of this week I am going to have to have my air conditioner back in it’s place in my living room because we are in for a heatwave.

When I saw the weather report I flashed on my friends who have been on social media posting about wanting Summer to get here since before Summer ended last year- they are hardcore Sun worshipers and I am of the opinion that they won’t be truly happy until our Sun dies, turns into a red giant and in that moment when the earth is in the process of  swallowed by the Sun will they be truly happy.

I don’t like the Summer, I sort of like the Spring because the air does smell better and I do like to plant things like pumpkins and herbs .  The ground is soft and spongy and a little warm. It’s not the plants that strike me as being lush and alive during the Spring, but that’s how I feel about the Earth they are growing in.

Wolfsbane
Photographer Randi Hausken

The fact is, I don’t like Summer because Summer is a killer.

Nothing grows in the Summer when it’s hot. Everything touched by the Sun’s brutal Summer rays  will  to die and  as macabre and dark as I can be, I can’t say I enjoy that process. It’s like watching a murder scene in a movie in slow motion with a creepy three note soundtrack plinking away in the background.

But I will watch, with  morbid fascination,  as my friends and neighbors run outdoors throw their hands up to the sky and scream in joy as the Sun reaches down and does to them what it’s doing to their lawns the flowers in their gardens-

” The Sun makes me feel so alive. ”

Foxglove.
Photographer: Brian Eastop

 

What Now Sly Fox

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Daily Writing Prompt: Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.

Photographer Unknown

I have lived a life where most of my time was spent in politics and

that means that almost all of the relationships I was in were purely

transactional.

 

There were few to almost no individuals that I was acquainted with

had anything to say to me or do with me unless there was something to be gained for

them in the way of information or connections.

 

I never took it personally because they all did that to each other and this is the reason why

– no matter what day job I held, no matter what cause I volunteered

my time to, I have been always and foremost  been a writer.

 

So every single time my political acquaintances  opened their mouths, every time they

screwed each other or me I noted it down in my journal and sure enough when you

write the stories I write you’re going to have a buffet of ideas to fill your plate from.

 

I did   pay a price for gorging my creative beast’s  hunger in the life I used to live.

 

I wasn’t involved in a single relationship where I didn’t have to ask myself what the

other person wanted. When I saw an email or a text or their number popped up on my

phone I would make a game out of it-‘what now sly little fox ‘I used to say.

 

Besides the inspiration for stories about corruption of the human soul,  in return I

learned a valuable lesson and I suppose you could say a positive lesson from these transactional relationships:

 

Monsters aren’t always stitched together from the corpses of the dead, ghosts don’t

haunt graveyards and houses and Evil doesn’t work it’s way into your soul and darken it

because the Devil made it happen.

 

Like I said, I spent years in transactional relationships and everybody, including myself

were in those relationships because we wanted something out of  each other. The thing

is,  I  wanted something entirely different and I got it.

 

What now, sly fox.