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walk with me >> from the pen of boot

Come, take me by the hand, walk with me a while.  We will walk along the path and listen to the cracking of the twigs and the rustle of the hidden things.  We will walk under the heavy bows of trees, their shade a blessed dark and green cloak, shielding us from the sun.  We will walk between the bushes, the leaves brushing against our legs, sometimes scraping, sometimes caressing.  We will walk amongst the flowers, their scented petals crushing under our naked feet, each gentle step releasing the scent of jasmine, the rush of lavender.  We will walk along the winding path, the sun sometimes glinting through, and we will be warm, but then we will be cooled by the moist breeze through the heavy trees.  We will walk and we will talk, but we will not talk of things, we will only talk of not-things, our words babbling like the nearby creek, senselessly and quietly moving along, not thinking, just moving and breathing.  We will walk together, stopping to listen for the chirping of birds or the silence of the forest.  We will walk together and just be.  We will walk until the end, whatever that might be.  Walk with me, inside my heart, my friend.

this weird, wired world >> from the pen of boot

I know when I first read those trail-blazing authors of the Golden Age they made me dizzy with wonder and amazement.  However, I’m not sure I ever completely believed that any of those technological wonders could come true, certainly not when I was around to be a part of it. 

Oh, I wished it would come true.  Wished so hard that it hurt.  Stared at the sky and imagined the impossible and the unlikely, wished until the stars began to blur. 

I make fun of the things that didn’t eventuate, as have and do others - “where are all the flying cars?” ... “why don’t I have my own personal jet-pack?” ... “when are we going to control the weather already?” - but, in truth, what has eventuated in the ‘future’ is all the more magnificent in its everyday and ordinary way.  The things I see daily, the thing I’m using right now, the stuff I take for granted should leave me breathless and speechless.

There isn’t the right word for it yet, but this real world-wide-web, this community across the miles, spanning loneliness and inspiration, it is the product of everything those authors wished for, imagined and wrote about. 

I salute them all and I am glad I was here to see it.

stuff of nightmares >> from the pen of boot

She looked at her trembling hands, amazed that her worst nightmare had come true. Except, of course, that it hadn’t.  Her worst nightmare was definitely the one about the little girl who kept running from the black and white world through to the red coloured shoe world and back again.  That one was truly terrifying and she’d never understood why - and neither did she want to. 

No, I guess it wasn’t her worst nightmare, but perhaps the manifestation of something that most of her life she wished fervently would never happen to her.  Nightmares, when we talk of them in the casual sense are never what we mean by the literal sense.  Ask someone what their worse nightmare is and it invariably will be something along the lines of “not being able to see” or “losing a loved one”.  Something real.  Something that may actually happen.  Not, in fact, a nightmare.  A deeply held fear or worry, yes.  A dream arousing feelings of intense fear, horror, and distress, no.

I can imagine at this point that there are those of you thinking, “yes, but we also know that nightmare can mean a genuine concern”.  The interesting point is that if I asked you what your worst nightmare was, you wouldn’t tell me “oh, the one with the giant carrot and pink, fluffy slippers”, you’d tell me something that you fear might truly happen.  Of course, if you’re the sort that actually does spend their days worrying about being attacked by giant carrots, then you may have some other problems to deal with.

Language interests me, as you can tell, and its propensity to change and adapt is staggering.  So, it’s all the more amazing that we haven’t come up with a better word for the dreaded fear of the nasty thing actually happening.  Yes, we use nightmare in our every day speech, but we know that’s not what we mean. 

There are other words, such as disquietude, which when we read them we know what they mean, but for everyday conversation, that’s too unwieldy.  We could ask “What’s your worst fear?”, but that just doesn’t have the same kick as nightmare.  It doesn’t strike the right chord.

So, when next asked “What’s your worst nightmare?” perhaps you should tell them.  Perhaps, instead, you should ask them what they mean.

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