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Dane Allred examines the "Abundance" of the universe in his list of "1001 Thanks"
Episodes
Tuesday Dec 07, 2010
Tuesday Dec 07, 2010
Bright Space
by Dane Allred
Unity
There is a brightness we can feel when we work in unity.
The space between us becomes brighter
We feel more as one
The work draws us together in a way
Nothing else can produce.
Working side by side with another someone
A someone we knew from the bright space
But had forgotten
Had lost
And had to rediscover again
Brings back that light we knew with that someone.
That someone we turned to in that long ago and far away
And said to each other,
“We are together now,
And we are all that ever is, ever was, or ever will be.”
But we both knew there was another way
For us to learn all there is to know
To experience all there is.
Alone, apart from each other, we could explore and discover all we could not know
If we stayed in that bright space together.
So now, as I stand by you, and you stand by me,
We are apart, but are still one.
That bright space is in me
And that bright space is in you.
And we feel the connection we had lost.
The recognition of that light we see in each other’s eyes,
That we see in the eyes of everyone who is anyone who is anywhere
Sparks that light again
And as we toil we remember
We are here to help each other learn all we can
We are here to learn all we can
We are striving to learn all there is to learn
As we spin in our separate spheres
Until that time we rejoin with that bright space
And are as one again.
All experience
All sadness
All happiness
All joy
All things will be joined again as one
And then we will truly feel the unity
The oneness we feel now when working side by side
On this marble we call Earth
Which speeds through space
Carrying all of us to that final destination.
That bright space where we will be one.
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Monday Dec 06, 2010
Monday Dec 06, 2010
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Minds in Ferment
by Anton Chekhov
The earth was like an oven. The afternoon sun blazed with such energy that even the thermometer hanging in the excise officer's room lost its head: it ran up to 112.5 and stopped there, irresolute. The inhabitants streamed with perspiration like overdriven horses, and were too lazy to mop their faces.
Two of the inhabitants were walking along the market-place in front of the closely shuttered houses. One was Potcheshihin, the local treasury clerk, and the other was Optimov, the agent, for many years a correspondent of the Son of the Fatherland newspaper. They walked in silence, speechless from the heat. Optimov felt tempted to find fault with the local authorities for the dust and disorder of the market-place, but, aware of the peace-loving disposition and moderate views of his companion, he said nothing.
In the middle of the market-place Potcheshihin suddenly halted and began gazing into the sky.
"What are you looking at?"
"Those starlings that flew up. I wonder where they have settled. Clouds and clouds of them. . . . If one were to go and take a shot at them, and if one were to pick them up . . . and if . . . They have settled in the Father Prebendary's garden!"
"Oh no! They are not in the Father Prebendary's, they are in the Father Deacon's. If you did have a shot at them from here you wouldn't kill anything. Fine shot won't carry so far; it loses its force. And why should you kill them, anyway? They're birds destructive of the fruit, that's true; still, they're fowls of the air, works of the Lord. The starling sings, you know. . . . And what does it sing, pray? A song of praise. . . . 'All ye fowls of the air, praise ye the Lord.' No. I do believe they have settled in the Father Prebendary's garden."
Three old pilgrim women, wearing bark shoes and carrying wallets, passed noiselessly by the speakers. Looking enquiringly at the gentlemen who were for some unknown reason staring at the Father Prebendary's house, they slackened their pace, and when they were a few yards off stopped, glanced at the friends once more, and then fell to gazing at the house themselves.
"Yes, you were right; they have settled in the Father Prebendary's," said Optimov. "His cherries are ripe now, so they have gone there to peck them."
From the garden gate emerged the Father Prebendary himself, accompanied by the sexton. Seeing the attention directed upon his abode and wondering what people were staring at, he stopped, and he, too, as well as the sexton, began looking upwards to find out.
"The father is going to a service somewhere, I suppose," said Potcheshihin. "The Lord be his succour!"
Some workmen from Purov's factory, who had been bathing in the river, passed between the friends and the priest. Seeing the latter absorbed in contemplation of the heavens and the pilgrim women, too, standing motionless with their eyes turned upwards, they stood still and stared in the same direction.
A small boy leading a blind beggar and a peasant, carrying a tub of stinking fish to throw into the market-place, did the same.
"There must be something the matter, I should think," said Potcheshihin, "a fire or something. But there's no sign of smoke anywhere. Hey! Kuzma!" he shouted to the peasant, "what's the matter?"
The peasant made some reply, but Potcheshihin and Optimov did not catch it. Sleepy-looking shopmen made their appearance at the doors of all the shops. Some plasterers at work on a warehouse near left their ladders and joined the workmen.
The fireman, who was describing circles with his bare feet, on the watch-tower, halted, and, after looking steadily at them for a few minutes, came down. The watch-tower was left deserted. This seemed suspicious.
"There must be a fire somewhere. Don't shove me! You damned swine!"
"Where do you see the fire? What fire? Pass on, gentlemen! I ask you civilly!"
"It must be a fire indoors!"
"Asks us civilly and keeps poking with his elbows. Keep your hands to yourself! Though you are a head constable, you have no sort of right to make free with your fists!"
"He's trodden on my corn! Ah! I'll crush you!"
"Crushed? Who's crushed? Lads! a man's been crushed!
"What's the meaning of this crowd? What do you want?"
"A man's been crushed, please your honour!"
"Where? Pass on! I ask you civilly! I ask you civilly, you blockheads!"
"You may shove a peasant, but you daren't touch a gentleman! Hands off!"
"Did you ever know such people? There's no doing anything with them by fair words, the devils! Sidorov, run for Akim Danilitch! Look sharp! It'll be the worse for you, gentlemen! Akim Danilitch is coming, and he'll give it to you! You here, Parfen? A blind man, and at his age too! Can't see, but he must be like other people and won't do what he's told. Smirnov, put his name down!"
"Yes, sir! And shall I write down the men from Purov's? That man there with the swollen cheek, he's from Purov's works."
"Don't put down the men from Purov's. It's Purov's birthday to-morrow."
The starlings rose in a black cloud from the Father Prebendary's garden, but Potcheshihin and Optimov did not notice them. They stood staring into the air, wondering what could have attracted such a crowd, and what it was looking at.
Akim Danilitch appeared. Still munching and wiping his lips, he cut his way into the crowd, bellowing:
"Firemen, be ready! Disperse! Mr. Optimov, disperse, or it'll be the worse for you! Instead of writing all kinds of things about decent people in the papers, you had better try to behave yourself more conformably! No good ever comes of reading the papers!"
"Kindly refrain from reflections upon literature!" cried Optimov hotly. "I am a literary man, and I will allow no one to make reflections upon literature! though, as is the duty of a citizen, I respect you as a father and benefactor!"
"Firemen, turn the hose on them!"
"There's no water, please your honour!"
"Don't answer me! Go and get some! Look sharp!"
"We've nothing to get it in, your honour. The major has taken the fire-brigade horses to drive his aunt to the station.
"Disperse! Stand back, damnation take you! Is that to your taste? Put him down, the devil!"
"I've lost my pencil, please your honour!"
The crowd grew larger and larger. There is no telling what proportions it might have reached if the new organ just arrived from Moscow had not fortunately begun playing in the tavern close by. Hearing their favourite tune, the crowd gasped and rushed off to the tavern.
So nobody ever knew why the crowd had assembled, and Potcheshihin and Optimov had by now forgotten the existence of the starlings who were innocently responsible for the proceedings.
An hour later the town was still and silent again, and only a solitary figure was to be seen -- the fireman pacing round and round on the watch-tower.
The same evening Akim Danilitch sat in the grocer's shop drinking limonade gaseuse and brandy, and writing:
"In addition to the official report, I venture, your Excellency, to append a few supplementary observations of my own. Father and benefactor! In very truth, but for the prayers of your virtuous spouse in her salubrious villa near our town, there's no knowing what might not have come to pass. What I have been through to-day I can find no words to express. The efficiency of Krushensky and of the major of the fire brigade are beyond all praise! I am proud of such devoted servants of our country! As for me, I did all that a weak man could do, whose only desire is the welfare of his neighbour; and sitting now in the bosom of my family, with tears in my eyes I thank Him Who spared us bloodshed! In absence of evidence, the guilty parties remain in custody, but I propose to release them in a week or so. It was their ignorance that led them astray!"
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Monday Dec 06, 2010
Monday Dec 06, 2010
Fighting Words
If you check in the Bible, one of the first jobs for Adam was naming the animals. Mark Twain said it this way, “I think Adam was at his level best when he was naming the creatures.” Adam named the animals before Eve was created, and this is probably so he would not be corrected. I like that old sexist joke, “If there is man talking in the woods, and there is no woman around to correct him, is he still wrong?” Of course the answer from the ladies is “yes”.
I’m not sure when I became such an avid promoter of names. Names can tell us quite a bit about the status of this thing, or that thing, or this person or that society. We label with names, but we also use these handles to identify ourselves and make sense of our world. I am very passionate about knowing the names of other people, especially my students. I make them learn each other’s names. I test them on it. I do my best to always try to use their names when I see them, and as I practice more, I get better at identifying them.
So what’s the big deal? Someone once said the most beautiful sound in the universe is the sound of our own names. Think about it. It validates you as a person. It means someone else has acknowledged you exist. And they want to let you know they know you are here. What sweeter sound could there be?
Knowing someone else’s name shows you care. Not knowing their name is a kind of snub. We can overcome this by pretending we know their name. But it really isn’t the same as the real, live use of the name of another person.
One time I was glad I knew one of my student’s names. This particular student was a little disturbed, and in a public school, we accept all kinds of people. Some students are being treated by psychologists or other mental health professionals, but does that mean we don’t let them get an education? It’s another reason I like teaching in public schools. If the student isn’t a danger to others, all of us can learn some interesting things about each others. Sometimes we discover a student doesn’t belong in school, and they are taken from school.
While this person who shall remain nameless seemed to get along with his fellow students, I had no idea another student was harassing him. It had reached a point where he took matters into his own hands, and one day, pulled out a knife and threatened the other student.
I am sitting at the front of the room and see at the back of the room what I thought was an otherwise passive student pointing a knife at one of my other students. I have a couple of choices, but when something like this happens, you don’t always have a chance to weigh your options. I immediately shouted his name and demanded he bring the knife to me, at the front of the class.
Think about how stupid this is for a response. Instead of calmly walking to the back and handling the situation in a calm manner, I shouted. I also told him to walk the knife up to the front of the class, which would cause him to pass several other students on the way to the front. Luckily, he was only mad at the person standing four or five feet away from him, and he instantly obeyed, walking the knife to the front of the room and placing it in my hand. He didn’t stab anyone else, and he didn’t stab me, and we quietly walked down to the office together.
Sometimes things work out when we know the right names to shout. But the more important concept I’m trying to communicate here is that without names, we walk around saying, “Hey, you!” to other people. I don’t think he would have brought the knife to me if I had done that.
I have been in other student scuffles, and sometimes even knowing the name and the students doesn’t help. I’ve broken up girl fights where one of the combatants was a student of mine, and I knew her very well. The problem with girl fights is they tend to get so emotional they don’t know what they are doing, and she ended up hitting me a couple of times. She even bled on one of my best shirts.
The last girl fight I got hit in the face and didn’t even know it. Some of my other students who were passively watching told me I got hit, but I don’t remember it.
Maybe if had known her name, I could have asked her why she hit me.
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Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Road Runner
Most of our barriers in life are mental. We create them, feed them, keep them growing and prospering in our heads. I’ve run four marathons, though those who were watching the race will tell you I was jogging. And sometimes walking.
But I didn’t get to the end of my fourth marathon by standing up one day and saying “I will run a marathon tomorrow.” I thought I could barely run a mile when I was in junior high. I had been being excused to go down to the high school track and “train” for the high school team, which meant of course I went and played on the high jump pit. It didn’t prepare me to run, but it was fun while it lasted.
Unfortunately, I was signed up to run the mile. I had never run a mile, but there’s no way I’m going to admit this to the coach. So, like an idiot, I line up with everyone else and completely embarrass myself. The guy who was supposed to finish behind me was smarter than me; he quit. So when I ran across the finish line and someone shouted, “Hey, the race is over”; he was right. I collapsed on the side of the track and found out I was hyperventilating. It’s interesting to float 3 feet off the ground. I never ran another step until ten years later.
I was twenty-five and some friends from California were in town. They were taking a week-long “Fitness for Life” class and invited me to run in a 5K race with them on Saturday. My mind put up the obstruction about the junior high race, but I was now mature enough to tell myself, “I am not my past.”
I agreed to run with them, but needed to do some work in the five days before the race. I found out a 5K is 3.1 miles. I got in my car and measured how far I had to run away from my house to equal 3.1 miles by the time I returned. I also measured where the first half-mile was.
That night, I ran a mile.
I was surprised, since I had told myself for ten years I couldn’t run a mile. I don’t remember how long it took or how slowly I ran. I only remember I ran a mile.
I decided this must be a fluke, and rested for a day. Then I ran another mile, walked a mile, and ran another mile. Now I had run two miles in one day, and walked another. I even felt like I could do more, but I didn’t want to push it. I wanted to save something for Saturday.
I showed up for the race unsure if I could really run 3.1 miles without stopping. I decided to go very slowly, and hope for the best. With four miles of training under my belt, I started my first race. It was a beautiful summer day with a crispness to the early morning air. I tried to focus on the road, ignore what my mind was telling me – that I was being an idiot – and simply plodded along.
People passed me by, but I didn’t care. I passed a couple of people. I made it the first mile, then the second mile. For the first time in my life, I had run two miles in a row. There was no stopping me now.
I never stopped jogging. I even had a little energy left at the end of the race to sprint ahead of the sixty year old lady in front of me and beat her. But I couldn’t keep up with the ten year old that passed us both at the finish line.
It didn’t matter. I had done something I was positive I couldn’t do, and it began a chapter in my life I am still exploring. Every time I hear that nagging voice tell me, “You can’t”, I think back to that modest beginning race, and how after about ten years and many, many shorter races, I ran a marathon. Then another. And another. I ran my slowest marathon ever just two months ago.
We are all in our own private races, and most of the challenges we face are against ourselves, though we may tell ourselves we are competing against someone else. Think of it this way. When I ran my first marathon, I was in my thirties. Guess what age bracket most of the winners of marathons are in? That’s right. In the last Olympic marathon a 38 year old woman set a new world’s record.
So I will never take first place in a marathon. Does that stop me? Only if I tell myself I can’t. But the secret is, I know I can.
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Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Quickness of Movement
“Why is it we can move so quicklies?’
Says Old Pete, on a couch, at his ease.
Says I, “It’s what we grew,
Me and you in order to,
Avoid our responsibilities.”
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Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Yearn and Learn
While some matches are made for burning
Some matches are simply a yearning
If he wants the she
But she don’t want he
He may learn that yearning means spurning.
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Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Sunday Dec 05, 2010
This is the complete episode of Abundance called "Learning" from November 28th.
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Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Sunday Dec 05, 2010
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The Ransom of Red Chief
by O. Henry
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama -- Bill Driscoll and myself -- when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition"; but we didn't find that out till later.
There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.
Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good.
We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the color of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.
About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.
"Hey, little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?"
The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.
"That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says Bill, climbing over the wheel.
That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.
Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tailfeathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says:
"Ha! Cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?
"He's all right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. "We're playing Indian. We're making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief's captive, and I'm to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! That kid can kick hard."
Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive, himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun.
Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like this:
"I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet 'possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don't like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it take to make twelve?"
Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start.
"Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?"
"Aw, what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?"
"Not right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave a while."
"All right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life."
We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.
Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yalps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs -- they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.
I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing, bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.
I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.
"What you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill.
"Me?" says I. "Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it."
"You're a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?"
"Sure," said I. "A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre."
I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have home away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.
When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut.
"He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back," explained Bill, "and the mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?
I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. "I'll fix you," says the kid to Bill. "No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!"
After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.
"What's he up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You don't think he'll run away, do you, Sam?"
"No fear of it," says I. "He don't seem to be much of a home body. But we've got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don't seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven't realized yet that he's gone. His folks may think he's spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he'll be missed today. Tonight we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return."
Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head.
I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.
By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: "Sam, do you know who my favorite Biblical character is?"
"Take it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses presently."
"King Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?"
I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.
"If you don't behave," says I, "I'll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?"
"I was only funning," says he sullenly. "I didn't mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I'll behave, Snake-eye, if you won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black Scout to-day."
"I don't know the game," says I. "That's for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once."
I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.
"You know, Sam," says Bill, "I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood -- in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long with him, will you, Sam?"
"I'll be back some time this afternoon," says I. "You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we'll write the letter to old Dorset."
Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me."
So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:
Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:
We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight tonight at the same spot and in the same box as your reply -- as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger tonight at half-past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box. The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit.
If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.
If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.
TWO DESPERATE MEN.
I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:
"Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone."
"Play it, of course," says I. "Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?"
"I'm the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I'm tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout."
"All right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages."
"What am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.
"You are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?"
"You'd better keep him interested," said I, "till we get the scheme going. Loosen up."
Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap.
"How far is it to the stockade, kid?" he asks, in a husky manner of voice.
"Ninety miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!"
The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in his side.
"For Heaven's sake," says Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I'll get up and warm you good."
I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the post-office and store, talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset's boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit.
When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response.
So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments.
In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wobbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.
"Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit."
"What's the trouble, Bill?" I asks him.
"I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there was nothin' in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I've got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized.
"But he's gone" -- continues Bill -- "gone home. I showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I'm sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse."
Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink features.
"Bill," says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, is there?
"No," says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?"
"Then you might turn around," says I, "and have a look behind you."
Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the round and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him is soon as he felt a little better.
I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left -- and the money later on -- was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for anyone to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.
Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit.
I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:
Two Desperate Men.
Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back.
Very respectfully,
EBENEZER DORSET.
"Great pirates of Penzance!" says I; "of all the impudent -- "
But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.
"Sam," says he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let the chance go, are you?"
"Tell you the truth, Bill," says I, "this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We'll take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away."
We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.
It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer s front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset's hand.
When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
"How long can you hold him?" asks Bill.
"I'm not as strong as I used to be," says old Dorset, "but I think I can promise you ten minutes."
"Enough," says Bill. "In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border."
And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.
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Tuesday Nov 30, 2010
Tuesday Nov 30, 2010
Circling Spheres
Now we are in the darkness,
Separated from the bright light,
But never far from remembering all we knew in that bright space.
As we circle in our own spheres,
We may seem to be apart,
But when my world bumps into yours
When our spheres seem to cross
And that brightness sparks the connection between us,
We remember for a moment, and then forget.
We were all once together until we decided to learn all
We could learn apart.
My sphere isn’t any different than yours
Except it is completely different
And someday, we will all join again together and share
All that we have learned by spinning in
Our separate spheres.
I remember you, and the peace we shared in that bright space.
I long to be there with you again,
But not until we have both learned all we were sent here to do,
All we were sent here to learn,
All we were sent here to share
Before we once again gather, and share that bright space
With everyone once again.
But while we are in this dark space,
Revolving around ourselves,
Seeming separate, but at once united
In our goal to use this time to learn, to grow and experience
The bitter and the sweet
The joyful and the sad
The height and the depth
We could not experience as one.
Watch me as I circle in my sphere inside the dark space.
I am watching you as you circle in your sphere inside the dark space.
When you and I contemplate all of us,
Who are circling in our spheres inside the dark space,
We understand that we are the bright space when we are all together,
And there is no darkness.
That is why I have that feeling I know you
Because I have always known you
And will always know you
We have always been together.
Even though our spheres seem separate
We are part of the whole, and the whole is part of us.
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Tuesday Nov 30, 2010
Tuesday Nov 30, 2010
Bright Space
by Dane Allred
You and I
I don’t know when I became self-aware.
I mean in this body, at this time.
There was that self-awareness I had forgotten.
From when we were in that
Bright space together.
But here, and now, I don’t recall when I decided
I am me
And
You are you.
I watch the small children playing and see they know who they are.
They don’t answer to the names of the other children
And seem to know they are separate.
We all remember the time when the universe revolved around us,
When everything was designed to serve us,
To amuse us,
And ceased to exist when we went away to something else.
This fragment of memory of our time together in the
Bright space holds us in a spell
Telling us we are all connected
We are all the same
We have been together before,
But then the separateness denies that truth
And parts us into our own worlds.
I move about in mine,
Forgetting that you and I came here to experience all we could
So that we could be together again in that
Bright space
And share all that we had learned.
We move about from day to day as if there was no connection
Between all I do and all you do,
All that is done by everyone else everywhere else.
We forget all that has been done
Connects us to this very second
To this very thought at this very moment
And then we move on to the next moment to see what else we can learn.
It has taken me a while to see that
I am You
and
You are Me.
Circulating about in our own lives to create this shared meaning now
And to create the end result.
Some have endured hardship, affliction, and suffering
So we can all discover how deep these pains can be.
To share all we have learned,
To realize all we have in common.
To appreciate the experience of each and every one.
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