Mugsy would not stop acting strangely as we walked. She refused to go, whimpering and pulling at her pink leash. I could ignore her pulling; there were occasions when she would pull at her leash because she was smelling something "important" in the grass and was not finished with it. But, I could not ignore the whimpering. My dog would bark at huge greyhounds but the moment the dog got closer and she could see that the dog was bigger than her, she would stop barking. It was usually very funny to watch. She was a lovable barking mutt, but I could not ignore her cries of concern. I knew that dogs usually had a keener sense of the things happening around them.
I looked forward towards the trail and decided to calm my puppy and go home.
As I leaned down to calm her and pick her up, I saw a flash of something that my heart recognized as...home. I thought I saw a dark shape running across the path, it reminded me of a squirrel except greenish. It was strange but, when I saw it I had a memory of a place that I felt I used to live. The place the colorful, like stepping into a beautiful landscape painting. I was standing in front of some older men in blue robes with caps on their heads. They were telling me that my time had come and that I needed to go through the door. I looked around and the door was a tree that was broken in half with a rainbow paving the entry.
I returned to the moment and picked mugsy up to let her know that she was okay and that if she did not want to go I would not make her.
I lied.
I took a couple of steps forward as she was calming down, I looked at her and she looked at me with her big brown eyes as if to say, "I love you, please let's go home." I apologized and we moved forward. With each step I could feel something in the air, something that was calling me back to the place 'it all started." What it was exactly, I did not know, I just knew that I felt like I had to go, I had to see it, the Katura tree, plus I wanted to make sure the green squirrel was just my imagination. I mean a green squirrel, that smacks of crazy right?
It was just a couple more minutes until I got to the location as I started to break into a run. I noticed how utterly out-of-shape I was a decided that the target zone wasn't going anywhere and I could walk fast instead. As, I got to the sign that read, "No trespassing" I found my heart beating faster. I had not idea why, this was no big deal. It was just a bunch a shrubs, broken logs, and one beautiful tree after all. I looked up to the top of the branches to see if I could see the "face" that I had seen before. My heart skipped a beat as I saw it again. The wind blew and the face moved with the wind. I smiled at the face and giggled under my breath as I told myself that I was being silly. I moved under the trespassing sign as a warm breeze came through. The breeze felt like a hot breath on my ear and I shrugged my shoulder to shake the weird feeling.
The face, I noticed was still there and I looked at it as I walked down the hill. I felt like a child that sees a shadow in their bedroom during the night and thinks it a ghost so they stay up all night staring at it, waiting to move.
I decided to try and talk to it just to prove to my imagination that it wasn't real.
"Hello, nice to see you here." I said
I waited a few seconds and then took my eyes off the face as I made a sigh of relief. Then I heard a voice say, "you're not supposed to be here yet."
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
and so it continues
Today was a beautiful spring day. it was 78 degrees outside and I was ready for a walk. I got my dog and grabbed her pink leash with the light pink hearts on it, so people would know she was a girl, and headed for the door. I don't know why but I started to think about the last time I had let my dog outside. My thoughts flooded to that dog that attacked Mugsy, which I later found out was a dog called a Chow-chow, a nice name for such an aggressive and giant dog. I realized that it had been several months since I had wanted to go outside with Mugsy at all. Today unfortunately, i knew that i had to "start somewhere" since mugsy was getting very pudgy for her little chihuahua/pug mix frame. Plus, I wasn't in the best shape of my life either so it was a beautiful day and it was time to get moving.
I started to walk up the usual way, up the street to the first main light about a quarter mile up the road then turn right and come back. The whole walk was usually a mile and took no more than 14 minutes. as I went to go toward the main stop light I stopped and thought about a place that i had not been to in years. The place was a doorway of sorts at least it felt like that to me. It was up the street a little and was the sight of an old drainage ditch. After years and years of water running through it, it had grown to be full of shrubs, flowers, herbs , weeds, dead broken logs, and one really beautiful and full Katsura tree whose leaves always reminded me of a heart.
I decided that I wanted to go see it even though it was gated off by the city and had a sign on it that read, "trespassers will be prosecuted." in my mind I had a right to go there and no city was going to stop me. I tugged at Mugsy to go left instead of right, she resisted for a moment but soon gave in and walked along side of me. Occasionally she would switch sides as she usually does in order to smell everything within her level.
About 15 minutes in to walk she started to whimper as we got closer to my memory area. I was determined to go since I kept getting lost in my own memories. I remember playing there with a young group of children that I was looking after. we were using it as our own imagination arena. We pretended to fight the goblins and monsters that were there as we flung spells and hid behind the broken log from our unseen attackers. I could remember how frightful and scary it had been when we heard a tree branch break on it's own while we silently listening waiting for the right moment to attack the imaginary goblins. That very real small moment of hearing the branch break caused us to wonder if there were more sinister, real forces at work as we hastily decided that it was time to go. the kids climbed up the small ravine first and as I looked back at the beautiful Katsura tree I would have sworn that I saw a face looking at me from beyond the leaves. I was both secretly scared and intrigued by that moment. Scared because of the feeling I got that the face I saw was really there and intrigued because the faced seemed to have been smiling as if to say, "i missed you."
I was torn from my memory as Mugsy started to forcefully pull backward and bark at something that was sending her into behavior that I had never seen before.
I started to walk up the usual way, up the street to the first main light about a quarter mile up the road then turn right and come back. The whole walk was usually a mile and took no more than 14 minutes. as I went to go toward the main stop light I stopped and thought about a place that i had not been to in years. The place was a doorway of sorts at least it felt like that to me. It was up the street a little and was the sight of an old drainage ditch. After years and years of water running through it, it had grown to be full of shrubs, flowers, herbs , weeds, dead broken logs, and one really beautiful and full Katsura tree whose leaves always reminded me of a heart.
I decided that I wanted to go see it even though it was gated off by the city and had a sign on it that read, "trespassers will be prosecuted." in my mind I had a right to go there and no city was going to stop me. I tugged at Mugsy to go left instead of right, she resisted for a moment but soon gave in and walked along side of me. Occasionally she would switch sides as she usually does in order to smell everything within her level.
About 15 minutes in to walk she started to whimper as we got closer to my memory area. I was determined to go since I kept getting lost in my own memories. I remember playing there with a young group of children that I was looking after. we were using it as our own imagination arena. We pretended to fight the goblins and monsters that were there as we flung spells and hid behind the broken log from our unseen attackers. I could remember how frightful and scary it had been when we heard a tree branch break on it's own while we silently listening waiting for the right moment to attack the imaginary goblins. That very real small moment of hearing the branch break caused us to wonder if there were more sinister, real forces at work as we hastily decided that it was time to go. the kids climbed up the small ravine first and as I looked back at the beautiful Katsura tree I would have sworn that I saw a face looking at me from beyond the leaves. I was both secretly scared and intrigued by that moment. Scared because of the feeling I got that the face I saw was really there and intrigued because the faced seemed to have been smiling as if to say, "i missed you."
I was torn from my memory as Mugsy started to forcefully pull backward and bark at something that was sending her into behavior that I had never seen before.
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