January 2019 – KNOMO CHOICIUS

The Great Composer

The notes bounced off of the flat surfaces of the large boulders strewn around the landscape. The pile of dirt and small stones grew longer, and taller. The decibel level of the so called music diminished. The racket from the stones sliding down the slopes of the growing ridge of rock and dirt drowned out more and more of the sound emanating from the window of the blue pick-up truck.

The digger stepped down hard on the upper edge of the spade’s blade, wiggling the top of the handle forward and back, in an effort to pry the annoying rock away from its neighbors.

A loud sigh announced the last bang of the last rock tumbling down the side of the rock pile. Joe grabbed the five gallon bucket from the edge of the rectangular pit, turned it upside down, and tested its stability. Then, stepping on it, he hauled himself up to ground level, and turned toward the truck, pulling the kerchief off of his head and wiping his face.

“Least I can do,” he mumbled, pulling the corpse out of the back of the truck. It did not complain as he dragged it toward the pit, and laid it out atop the ridge of rocks. “Least I can do.”

“Damn self-proclaimed musician should be allowed to experience the same torture he subjected us to.”

Joe walked back to the truck, and cranked up the music. He returned to the pit, pulled out the bucket, and sat down.

“Half an hour. That’s all he gets. Time to be moving on.”

Suddenly, Joe sat upright, hearing something new. The so-called music flowed around him in ever changing combinations as it bounced off of the faces of the boulders. The complexity and subtlety ebbed, then flowed again, each time with a new hue. The barren landscape took on new life.

Joe slumped over. He realized he had erred.

Then, sadly, he rolled the corpse into the pit, filling it in with all of the rocks he had just so recently worked so hard to dig out of the ground. He left the music playing, and walked away, knowing his skeleton, or that of his truck, would open the lock of the mystery of the disappearance of the great composer.

Awesome Writing Prompts #731: Person Place Thing

world’s worst songwriter, freshly dug grave, skeleton key

A Faded Rose

Faded beyond faded, the color of the roses resembled that of the collapsed mold colony in the center of the ring of tea bag tags.

The dried skin of the corpse smoothed the knobs of the protruding bone ends.

Remains of a slip of newspaper rested in her lap.

Mouse turds decorated the pile of crumbled egg shells in the sink. The corner of a crust of bread remained on a plate, perched on the edge of the countertop.

Jill surveyed the rest of the interior of the cabin. Her eyes returned to the vase, which covered the corner of the folded newspaper, the obituaries staring upward.

Jill turned, and walked out of the door, pulling it shut behind her.

“So,” Jack asked, as he re-holstered his revolver, “is it true?”

“She wasn’t wearing the rose. And there was a whole vase full. But they were pretty faded.”

This prompt, from the site “Prompts that don’t suck” immediately brought Delta to my mind.

A pile of used teabags, an old newspaper with something cut out of it, an egg salad sandwich were three of the six items listed for prompt 733.

Dancing to an Unheard Melody

This is a past life regression I did in 1988. The title above is from my friend Mel, who heard me read the piece in the writing group…

To my surprise, I actually find myself embodied. My arms around my partner, I look into his eyes. He is black. He wears an army uniform. He is taller than I am. He leads me around the dancing floor. Bright spots of light move as the glitter ball rotates above us. The vision is a vision, and I don’t hear the music. I look down at my shoulder, and find I am white. I don’t think this is a surprise. The inner self I was channeling must have known this as soon as I noted the dark tones of my partner’s skin. The question of my gender was never articulated.

As the unheard tune ends, I step back to smile at my partner, and looking down, I see the upper line of my yellow sleeveless dress against my skin. I am pretty. I know this, even as I can’t see my face. They say that beauty is perceived in the face designed from the average of all common features in a population. I fill in my face with this subconscious information. I am slim. The pretty and the slim are different from my current incarnation.

The skirt of my dress is yellow, like the top, but covered with black polka dots, the size of quarters. I sense this is happening in the 1930’s. Maybe one of those dance contests they had with cash prizes to supposedly alleviate the misery of the depression. Like in the movie They Shoot Horses.

Now, thirty years after this past life regression experience, I wonder why an enlisted soldier, presumably with a paycheck, would subject himself to this. Hmmm. Maybe he was attracted to me? Still, this is hard for me to imagine, having been stuck in my current body for all of this lifetime.

The essence that I took from the extremely foggy vision of a past life, that felt extremely forced at the time, was that my unwillingness to conform to society’s expectations goes back to a time before my birth into this current heavy, plain looking carcass. But she must have died young, if she was in her twenties in the 1930’s or 40’s, and died in time to provide a soul to one born in the late 1950’s. I wonder what happened to my dancing partner. Was he a partner for an evening only? A weekend of a dance contest? Years?

Yesterday, I joined the Theosophical Society. They’d already been around for 100 years when I graduated from high school. Their purpose is to promote Universal Brotherhood. The founders believed in the benefits of reincarnation. If you know you have many lives, you don’t have to feel pressured to “get this life perfect.” All the major religions teach that we are more than our bodies. Most teach that we are more than our minds. Or that we are neither our bodies, nor our minds. Nor our feelings for that matter. I can intellectually grasp that there is evidence that we are more than our bodies and thoughts and feelings. The idea of reincarnation helps to explain a lot of things. It’s not the only possible explanation for the experiences of deja vu, or strong connections to other people. It’s not the only possible explanation for my wondering from the age of four why I was born.

To my mother’s credit, she never gave me a fake answer. For some reason, it never occurred to me to ask my dad. Perhaps this persistent question, which implies that I did have a choice in being born, or at least that I thought I did, is even better evidence for reincarnation. Or at least for the existence of the individual’s soul or spirit as an entity separate from the body.

When I took the past life regression workshop, I had little hope that I was actually going to be able to get any information about my past lives. I’m an intellectual, and that generally interferes with the ability to perform self-hypnosis. As noted at the top of the post, I was surprised to even get a glimpse of a past life.

My friends at the Spiritualist church assure me that I have had many past lives. Who knows? My “karmic astrology report” from Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment says that my planets give a tendency to get carried away by my imagination. Yet some type of undiagnosed brain damage has left me with extremely poor visualization skills. I get lost really easily, even as I have developed skills to get to where I need to go in my daily life. Maybe this brain damage is what has kept me centered in the physical world. When I do have a clear inner vision, it always feels like a gift. I can never conjure it at will.