New Nile (Onward)

 

The times, oh they a change.  (or at least appear a then to do so?)

For Memphis, my Memphis (hopefully the real Memphis?) – what once used to mean hardship and poverty, confusion or even the old jokes of far eastern Egyptian Capitals, now seemingly tended, deeply cared for, no longer a step-child of rot or neglect; my how times have changed indeed. 

Maybe it was always this way, will perhaps be again soon – maybe new city folk will come in, softer city leaders will put up their own attempt at trials, at time, at a real investment in time and place and culture and affordable wages and housing; that actual mecca is never the place, or a singular idea – it’s just the refusal to let the story, the real story, to never die.    

 For I walk Beale Street now today under the hot sun, and it is a postcard of itself; a glossy tie and new lie folded into both the pocketwatch and broad broach of a city that has forgotten how to bleed. The plastered LED’s are too bright now, too regular, seeming the color of old children’s cereal. Contemporary tourists meander by in matching T-shirts pose beneath a sign where once a man was shot, where beside that another darker fellow lynched, but one that that says HOME OF THE BLUES in bright attempting proud letters; their smiles fixed like the plastic guitars in the window of the gift shop, while the real blues hall is remains only a foundation to their left just underneath a gravel lot.

A recorded loop of some other Marc’s song leaks from a speaker poorly disguised as a lamppost, everyone takes the photo they will assuredly forget to post or retweet (or repost the retweet), and go back to their own clapboard Holiday Inn; the pavement here is clean enough to eat from, yet no one is hungry.

Meanwhile across the way, a chain barbecue joint offers “authentic ribs” for more than a day’s wage, the sauce bottled in mid-state New Jersey, an alt-vegan bio-resturaunte beside it.  

A cartwheeler meanders by selling kabobs and kimchi, all huskings old poems and gleaming six strings; I stand in the middle of this ‘old’ street and feel absence like a cavity where a tooth once lived, stood mightily, properly well.

Perhaps I am wiser now.  Richer, certainly, not having to circle round the same ten blocks over and over, like an old rubix cube or pandora’s box or old wine or grudge to settle.  Not breaking irons nor chasing dollars, not even evading policia at every turn; assuredly sweating less so. 

Yes the cops now help old ladies across the street here, the parking lots have clearly also won. They stretch in every direction, black oceans under a jaundice moon. A digital billboard flashes advertisements for a riverboat cruise that leaves from a dock more than two miles away. The air smells of hot asphalt and funnel cake, time and forgetfulness. Somewhere a mechanical bull bucks in slow motion for tips. I search the faces passing by (college girls in cowboy hats, fathers hoisting toddlers onto their shoulders) and find no recognition of who I or what this ground once held. They take selfies with a bronze statue of former local, his trumpet frozen mid-phrase, and move on to the next attraction.

The blues is a backdrop now, a filter on their cameras.

Yet I close my eyes, and the street rewinds.  It is now the seventies, and the rot has already set in, but it is a slower rot then, an unknown, an almost dignified malfeasance as we pretend to ourselves that time and lies are better now. How are we to know that what we are staring at is not progress?  That the same vultures erected new nests, that they continue to flap wings and soar overhead.  The lots are still new-ish, sure, still proud enough of their gleaming emptiness and false promise. They shimmer like the hoods of the Cadillacs parked nose-to-tail atop them. The clubs have begun to cater to the out-of-towners of course, but the music hasn’t entirely surrendered. At the Ebony, a trio from Clarksdale still plays for both tips and pride, their amplifier held together with duct tape and prayer.

The singer’s voice cracks on the high notes the way a levee cracks before the deluge.

Outside, a street preacher continues on in a powder-blue suit waves a tambourine and warns of the wages of sin.  He will soon enough be replaced by ‘fluencers, by other types of shysters we always know well, will always be here and encourage all.  They hound us, circle us sure, for they are such intimate vultures of our lives; that to be without the abuser now as then, is to only know and sew abject confusion (and dream a dream so dearly so, so easily lost or cast away).

Then too it is suddenly 65’.  A great battle has been won, Tennessee continues to rip and roil of course, and everyone remains…unsure, certainly, on what to do, but it is a new century, a new war, and the tides now like then continue to churn.  A dice game flickers in the alley behind the BBQ stand. The air is thick with hickory smoke and reefer and the sweet rot of bourbon spilled on sawdust. The street is narrower then, inprobably so, the buildings leaning in like gossipy aunts, but girding on, every out and down and on.

You can smell the river even, if you stand in the right doorway, or the wind catches or turns so.

But the lots now as then are spreading, each and every shoreside dealer offering ten percent return guaranteed return (for whom?  Nobody cares to bother to ask). Every month another rooming house comes down, another shoeshine and part of the shoreline vanishes seemingly forever. The city fathers speak of progress, of urban renewal, of making the city ‘safe’ (if only for convention dollars). They do not say what they are renewing, or who it was unsafe for.  Meanwhile, my own negro boy, how he continues to glance over his own shoulder, on his very way to school..

I close my eyes again and the film jumps even further back.

It is 1958, and Beale Street is a Kingdom. The pavement itself seems to breathe, to exhale out promise and tobacco scent. Mitchell’s Hotel glows like a lantern at the corner, its sign promising ROOMS BY THE HOUR OR THE…well, something else, all tempting, calling me, us, we all, so. Inside the Club Paradise, there is a lady named Miss Ruth is singing about New Troubles coming forth (as if the emerging burdens were hers alone to carry). Her voice is a low fire, blanking and flaring, giving us all hope. The band beside her answers her with horns that sound like they have swallowed the Delta whole. Men in sharkskin suits lean against the bar, their glistening fedoras tilted like question marks. New women in satin dresses the color of midnight laugh a bit too loud, their laughter a kind of defiance.

For the first time I saw her, it was not yet a street but a river of sound; a black Nile spilling over its banks and flooding the very night with something older than the city itself. It was 1958 alright, and I had come down from Harlem on a Greyhound that smelled of sweat and fried chicken and ultimate tired sadness, chasing rumors of a music that could make a man forget even his very name. Memphis back then of course did not disappoint. The city had risen around me and everybody, like a fever dream as we all gently landed, its warehouses and cotton lofts glowing with the same imperial confidence that must have animated Alexandria when the Ptolemies still walked its quays.

Like Rameses before seeking his 87^th bride..

For Beale itself was the proof: a narrow corridor of brick and neon where the Delta met the world, where the children of new Pharaohs—dispossessed, re-enslaved, re-freed—had built something equally mighty of and in their own right.

Meanwhile outside, the street remains(ed) a carnival of small hustles: a boy selling newspapers, a policy runner collecting dreams in a cigar box, a soapbox man promising salvation for only just dollar and delivering it back in tongues. The matchstick click against the curb, the police coming soon. Someone is always winning, someone always losing, everyone going their own desperate intricate ways.

The air then as now is thick with sweat and perfume and the copper tang of blood from a fight that ended ten minutes ago and will start again at closing time. You can feel the river two blocks away, the ‘ssippi rolling its ancient tongue against the low bluffs outside of town, whispering that everything here is both at once borrowed and everything here is eternal. Just like back home – just like I want every small child to hear and bear witness to (and see).

It wont last though, nothing does: the sharks have already sensed and scented blood in the water. 

Yet as I open my eyes and I am back in the pretend present, standing beneath the too-bright neon again, the cancer note clutched deep in my hand, some new senses occur. A new fangled carriage clops past, its driver narrating ancient history in a voice like melted plastic, a Tesla beside him, idly revving on. The tourists applaud on cue, continue their merry way along this intellectual slaughterhouse.

I want to tell them what they are clapping for, but the words stick in my throat like sharp gristle.  I lower my eyes, and begin to walk away. 

For modern Beale now is only two blocks long, whereas once it continued all the way down to Myrtle (and of all charming delight, Manassas).  They have attached a big stadium to its backside, and the architecture students come to take their Argentinian privilege beside Chinese voices alongside endlessly looping digital shenanigans, and Antarctic ways.  It used to be…different, I think.  (I have to believe it is still there, will most assuredly, certainly come again). I believe it because I, we, everyone all, must.

Because if Memphis can forget Beale, then every city that ever birthed a sound worth hearing can be reduced to a selfie stick and a shining cyanide capsule.

But rivers don’t work that way. They pile up, or go around, flow, cut through, of course.  They eventually carve canyons through mountains (They carry seeds a thousand miles).

They most certainly return.

Instead I walk to the edge of the street where the pavement gives way to one of other endless seas. The asphalt is warm under my shoes, still holding the day’s heat. As I pass I think of the old old city of Alexandria; how it eventually sank beneath the harbor and and into the Mediterranean itself, and was lost for centuries, its libraries and temples claimed by silt and salt and (eventually) time.  I think hard too of Memphis (the other Memphis, of course), where beside that other great river still runs through the city like a vein of liquid memory, passed a necropolis (which like all necropolis, dry dearly in and with enough time).

For all rivers are the same. They carry the dead and the living in the same turbulent, petulant current. They erode stone and build new deltas, carry on; they forget nothing.

I see now new kids coming by with newer trumpets locked in hand, phones alight with algorithms and waking dreams and promises.  They are making their own stories as they bounce and boogy along, humming music to themselves that is at once both foreign and home and harmony, and new lies and old promises yet undiscovered, and on that I begin the first quakings of a hint of a gander of a smile.

For Beale Street is not dead: it is and always was dreaming.

…and dreams, like rivers, have a way of always winding onwards.  (And in time, eventually finding the sea.)

Beside it all as I go the ‘ssippi flows ever on, always like me (like all of us, really), still churning, burning so, as it goes ever outward, onward..

Dreams (a poem)

Get your butterfly nets, your giant hooks a sharpened
ready for mouths a gaping, the eyes flopped lollygaged style floundering, sifting, lounging.
Feel them in, gaff them well, club and club and club
until the feet dont feel well, or see the light; till toes cant stand the dancing.

These emotions, they feel like insanity rising,
they seem like stick stuck caught between the hard walls,
bouncing off the long halls, fleeing, gaining near to you.
All the flavors of a hug held near (sell it, dear)

For the only time I forget you, is in the imagined arms of another nearing,
which is a lie for none compete; they are stories strung true, twist clearly
yet I wake each night - yes, every single night, crying, feeling listless
from dreams of your hands there, outstretched, so near. Nearly....

She caught me as one does a gift, did not turn away
that female folly, coming near, oft draining down.
You pull me into me, I sometimes spinning and don't know what to do
you shift me in to you, that kiss stopping time and mercy up and unto itself.

Babe, I woke from this day amongst a dream of you,
at the top of the stairs, sitting in that tightened way
saying all the things I thought I needed, wanted, desired now to bear
Not trusting that version of you, for the real you it churns

in all its twisting brain matter, punked me dearly,
Struck me clearly with a strait look, a wiggled butt
(The way she danced down the hall, grey walls decorated dearly)
She didn't revolt enough there, it seems! Getting her hair a ready. A dream? XD

Babe, visit thus again, thus prep your hands for the holding
for its getting dark, your symbols quickly disappear
time continues to draw us, all the sad songs bind us,
till the Son comes round once again.

Babe, come again,
for the shades are falling, the stars are calling;
the dark, its getting near.
The cold, it rises.

Oh, so very dear; the nearing.
Adieu.

Last Night

Last night I dreamed.  Not of time, or for the first time (or hard thing things), but just simply of you.

(and of yours, of course; of could-be ours and then some)

It started at my grandparents cottage, of course.  The front yard, furthest from the lake, full of snow and the anticipation of everything nearing, all my family coming in, getting together, coming close.  My sister was in the kitchen, my cousins pulling in, everything part of that joyous madhouse that only the initiated can come to know and understand and love so well.  

Then somehow (go figure) we were at Jackies new place, which wasn't actually her real one of course, but a blending of yours and of color and bright and green, just before sun-up.  You had risen early from working hard the day before, and my heart went out as you made sure to come right over and kiss me, before I could stumble or tumble or even fall then off the couch.  My heart fell then too, not down or out, nor wheeling or screaming from my chest....but instead UP, hoping to brighten everything around that it could touch, same as you do, same as you always will and would and seems to come as easy as the way you pull me close (same as you always do).   You would go out and slay it that day, each day, every day, of course you would, as long as your gorgeous legs would hold and lungs collected breath.  

(Somewhere behind, I could hear your husband making lunch sandwiches for the kids, getting ready for the day, getting everything ready for the next, go figure).  We should have tripped over that same rock as we tussled, laughed aloud and of course ended up entwined on the floor, TV somehow now on above, a glowing.  My father came in, grumbling that his tie for work somehow got wrapped around us as we embraced.  I tossed it to him and he rolled his eyes, knowing, they all know, they all have always had so much love to show and offer (and were the ones that taught me how I am and would eventually come to be).

Then the bus honked, and you had to go.  Out to the front courtyard, down the steps and the dance troupe hanging out of windows, and yes more bright colors, certainly, and garb, and oh how well you would hug and fit in amongst them.  I did not pat your rear or smile too much (for that would be a sin in moments like these, those), here at least on the great days, here on the finally getting a chance to shine true and rise up and join the best of the rest as they stand.  

My heart, that of pure gold now.

(That of matching your own; our hair)

For the night before I didn't dream: how could I?  A thousand happy things spinning round, and a giant lighting of the sun just in the middle, I simply falling in.  Mayhap impossible to escape its gravity.

(Especially while diving amongst..)

...for what will tomorrow, or the first of the mornings real true light now next bring?

Either way, my heart stays here, waits here, waits a trembling, oh just trembling so.  

Coming of the Nord. -M, Weisgerber

In the heart of modern-day Nordlingen, nestled among the rolling hills of Bavaria, an eerie sense of foreboding had settled. Whispers, like ethereal tendrils, wound their way through the town's cobblestone streets. The townsfolk spoke in hushed tones of Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Dinkelsbuhl, cities to the north that had just last week, just the other day even, met a fiery, calamitous fate!

(Oh hate of hates, how oft do you fly free??)

ForRothenburg, with its medieval charm, had become naught but ashes. Dinkelsbuhl, once a bastion of history, lay in ruins. Both had fallen victim to infernos that had raged unchecked for days, reducing these northern siblings to charred vestiges of their former glory.

As the townspeople gathered in the marketplace, exchanging tales of these tragic blazes, a trio of enigmatic figures arrived. Cloaked in obsidian robes that seemed to drink the sunlight, they emanated an aura of otherworldly significance. Their eyes, deep pools of shadow, held secrets untold.

"KIDS!" said the group, while the elders watched on. (Deviants, whispered others, but it took a week before those words rang on)

As the sun descended in a circle of fiery hues, the trio positioned themselves at the square's epicenter. Their hands, pale and delicate as porcelain, joined in a peculiar union. Murmuring words born of arcane tongues, their voices wove through the air like a whispered enchantment, words that the townsfolk could not decipher. An aura of mysticism enveloped the square as darkness settled.

"LUNATICS!" some giggled, falling to the floor. "Usurpers!" others joked, rolling their eyes in a bore.

With a quiet confidence, the trio positioned themselves at the center of the square. Hand in hand, they formed a perfect circle as the last rays of sunlight painted a fiery ring around them. Words fell from their lips, words unknown to the townspeople, a language lost to time. Only a few onlookers noticed, their curiosity piqued for a moment before being drawn away by the distractions of the evening. The circle dissolved, and the trio dispersed into the crowd.

It was only a matter of hours before the square itself seemed to mirror that fateful circle. A fire, ignited in a manner both poetic and mysterious, began to consume Nordlingen. The flames danced with a supernatural grace, illuminating the ancient stone walls and casting eerie shadows that seemed to whisper secrets of their own.

As the town burned, questions and theories swirled like smoke in the night. Some blamed the suevite, the impact material that formed the town's unique geology, while others whispered of the town's druidic past, suggesting that old powers had awakened. Still, there were those who suspected arson, a malevolent force working its way south towards Munich.

Days turned to nights, and Nordlingen's whispered conversations took on a newfound urgency. The townspeople, bound by a collective unease, wondered if the trio's presence had anything to do with the disasters befalling their northern neighbors. They questioned the role of Suevite, the mysterious mineral that formed the bedrock of their town, a relic of a meteoric collision eons ago. For Nordlingen, steeped in history, had always borne an air of the arcane. It was an old druidic meeting site, a place where the mystical and the mundane intertwined. The streets whispered of ancient rituals performed beneath the shadow of the tree in the marketplace, its gnarled branches reaching out like an oracle's fingers.

The nub-tailed cat, a shadowy specter with eyes that gleamed like shards of onyx, became a symbol of these enigmatic events. Seen only on the fringes of sight, it slipped in and out of thought, a silent witness to the growing tension.

For flames erupted from the ground, but it was a fire unlike any other. It moved with a poetic sort of grace, embracing buildings and streets in a dance of destruction. It wasn't the savage hunger of an ordinary blaze; it was a fire that seemed to tell a story, to sing a mournful, ancient song.

Whispers and theories would later abound. Some believed the Suevite, restless in its ancient slumber, had awakened to vent its fury. Others thought it was the consequence of the town's past, the echoes of druidic rites that had left an indelible mark. And then there were those who suspected a malevolent arsonist, a shadowy figure working their way south to Munich, leaving poetic devastation in their wake.

The tree in the marketplace, its branches now scorched and twisted, stood as a silent sentinel to the night's infernal ballet. Its roots, once a source of solace and secrets, were now exposed, the earth around them charred and broken. The tree had witnessed the transformation of Nordlingen, from whispers of its enigmatic trio to the crescendo of its burning mystery.

And the nub-tailed cat, the elusive guardian of secrets, lingered at the edge of perception for many days. Its presence was a question mark that haunted the town's collective consciousness, a riddle that defied solution.

"Omen," many said, though it never reached their lips. "Menace," said the rest, and on this they meant.

As the ashes settled, Nordlingen remained an enigma, its secrets buried deep within its meteorlogical heart. The trio had long vanished into the folds of obscurity, leaving behind a town forever changed by the shadow of its fiery dance. It would be remembered not for what it had been, but for the mysteries it had harbored and the questions that would never cease to haunt its history. And as the first light of dawn broke over the charred remnants of the heart and the beat and the cradle of that once and former fair of town, one could almost hear the whispers of ancient spirits, weaving their tales into the tapestry of time, as the world moved on, forever changed by a Friday eve in a quiet Bavarian town.

 

Wander (1/7/22), by M.Weisgerber - 1800 Words/appx 10 Min Read

 

Twas hot again, sweat and minute drippings catching at the creases, the morning barely at 9am.

“Do you know where you are going?”

“Sure.”

“Is it somewhere to the north?”

“Most assuredly.”  There was hardly any space in the parking lot when he arrived, a thin coat of dust already settling across the front of the Land Rover as much as the scrub-brush and cactus around him, the very words Karen had left him with seeming to carry as his only guide.   

Vortexes, life, Arizona – what did the world know of the make believe??

So here he was, hot boots, short pants.  He wondered at what the Edo Japanese would have made of this same trek, equal mountain loving folks that they were.  Sedona, the land of the Red Rocks - There was something particularly alluring about the thought of finding a place where a break in the earth was said to split open and carve up the very air around it. 

“Are you sure you don’t want anyone to go with?”

“Or at least a guidebook?”  Andy, always the prankster, butting in when it wasn’t needed.

Vortexes, sun life; what else then could he find? Yes, it had been one of those years for all of him.

“No, no, I should be ok, just don’t ruin for me what I can find up there.”  He took another swig from his canteen, glancing further around. 

The entire way up he had seen the trail crowded thick with people, every seventh or eight with a yellow guide book clutched deep under one armpit.  Yet as he walked through the red rocks of the canyon, he couldn't help shake the feeling that something was off – perhaps he would see a man with a knife?  They had warned him back at camp to keep his head. 

“The very air gets to you, man!,” one of the taller old-timers had said. There had been mustard on his mustaches.

Still, he had to admit that maybe the fellow was on to something.  The landscape seemed to shift and swirl around him, and he found himself focusing in on details that he normally would have overlooked - a single bush, a rock, a local bird flying overhead.

Light, shade, shadow, the rocks – the utter red of the iron stuck for a hundred thousand million whatever. 

Was that a saguaro on the distance, waving (or just wavering?) in the morning fug?

Despite his mounting nervosa, Ezekiel remained determined to continue forward - he had come too far to turn back now, and he knew that he had to see this through to the end.

“Pardon me sir!”  A tall debutant had said, pushing close.

“Outta my way!” a sharply dressed boyscout, forging ahead. 

“Excusse!” came the hashish of a sure footed Italian. 

Up and up he wound, wondering again and again if Karen had been right.

Was he on the right track?

He had never been the type to examine a guidebook, wasn’t yet sure if the nearest twists and bends really were taking him deeper into the canyon, or out of it; another tip of the hipping flaska, another hard trudge forward, up.

“Half an hour more!”  said a couple on his right, give a thumbs up.

“Fifteen more my kind sir!”  an Australian, he could have sworn it. 

Nothing was off, the heat was just getting to him a tad was all, the fact it had been forty minuets longer already than he had hoped or suspected, up, another few steps, further up.

Boyston Canoyn.  Back at camp they had told him this was the real center of it, the real place where the nights would linger, and sometimes clocks would run..

(What was off, nothing is off, all is fine, something is off what was off, what was..)

So out he had came, on he had trudged, the weight of the year starting to slide off, no, nothing was off up here, his sister had been wrong, he continued on until he saw…no cyotes at least, nothing much to worry off, no ginkos, no sloths, no worries other than the…other than the…

The lines.

The lines?

It was then that he spotted what his deeper animal cortex had been warning him for the last half hour, maybe more, the sheer audacity and size of it.

There were regular lines

“Huh,” was the best he could manage.  The rocks and trees seemed to be arranged in strange, straight lines radiating out from somewhere, he was sure, and he couldn't help but feel that there was something deeper and darker at play.

No, not malevolent; just a trick of the light, just another few steps, just another..

When he reached the top of the summit, Ezekiel saw a massive stone outcropping that looked like it was about to give way on one side, and a sheer cliff on the other that resembled the prow of a boat pointed towards the sky to the other.  Groups of people were huddled nearer the tall rock to the right, where one gnarled old tree that seemed to stick out of the ground like some ancient being.

Many people waved at it, but nobody went near it or touched it.

Nothing sinister after all.

Yet what of the outcrop to the left?  This was clearly the ‘vortex’ his sister had been chatting of this morning, its clear styrated shape to.

“Betcha couldn’t run around it twice!”  Yelled the shorter.

“Bet cha couldn’t keep up.”  Ezekiel could only stand there

 It was huge!  Taller than a house, even if only an eight as wide.  It was hard not to take ones eyes off of it once it was spotted.

Could it be done? 

This side of the wide stone seemed to sit as if on a table top, .

Eh, why not?  Something about the lines continued as he stooped. 

He started round.

He made his way towards the stone, his heart pounding in his chest.  Likely it was from the altitude.  Likely too, the booze was just beginning to get a foothold.  It looked the same hundred shades of dark maroon that made up the rest of the canyon.

Heat, a slab of stone similar to Heston’s Ten Commandments; oh, he was being ten shades of fool on this; he continued forward. 

As he continued on, Ezekiel couldn't help but feel that he was being watched.  He glanced over his shoulder repeatedly, expecting to see one of the smaller kids ready to strike him with a stick, or else some new fangled toy, or perhaps .  No, nothing but the middle aged couple bitching about the map in front of them, two snotting little dogs nipping at each other. 

One step, two – a little further and he couldn’t see the big tree further back behind him.  A few paces further on.

Three steps, ten – a few paces more and he was certain he had crossed the halfway mark. 

Almost, almost, there we.., his mind kept telling him, edging him forward, the thick molten bottom of the hip flask calling, he turned harder again, he was just, he..he..he..

When he finally made it to the other side, he let out a sigh of relief.  Saftey!  Pauseure!  Nothing else then to worry!

No, no!  It was just a trick of the light?? 

Yet beside him, mere millimeters from his hand a thick insect lounged happily.  He had seen one before only in books, pondered.

The land bent – the very rays of the sun seemed to reach out and touch him.

“What the…?”  Was all the best he could think to say.  Nobody around him seemed to notice, too many were busy taking pictures, the side of the scorpion continuing to mill and twist and to…to turn back into the stick it had always been??

No, no, that couldn’t be, wasn’t right! 

Quickly he pulled his hand close, grabbed up what remained of the knapsack, and started to hurry down.  In his head he swore he could almost just hear the faint tick of drumbeats, having to remind himself again and again.  Not a bug, not a trial, not on time – down, leaving, time to go. 

As he descended the mountain, whistling a tune to steady his nerves, Ezekiel heard a low whisper behind him (no, nothing but the wind, no faint tricks or turns of the light).  He turned around, but there was nothing there.

Nothing but the wind, nothing but the tall basketball fellow or the Lithuanian just going for a morning stroll, nothing but, nothing but..

Sedona, vortexes – a very split in the seam of the earth, where (what?  What exactly other than himself?) something could slither out if it wanted to. 

He quickened his pace, but the whispers only grew louder.  Another few steps, and he could feel the dirt begin to whine, the very ground threatened to give way, the very air seemed to taste..

“Is everything ok?” 

The lady seemed nice.  She had bright purple boots on, and wildly stringy hair that for some reason reminded him of his mother, standing short before him, hair pulled back and up and smart and close and proper. 

“Yes, assuredly,” he mentioned, lifting himself again and again.  He couldn’t help but stare at the flower on her bonnet, glance from time to time at the smaller buds seeming to peek and pry from each corner and crevasse of the land – flowers, chimeras; the land suddenly seemed alive and thrilled!

“Yes, I was just up checking out your...oh what do you call them, your fabled ‘vortexes’ or whatnot, and seemed to have forgotten to bring enough water!”

“Oh that’s alright dearie – here, have some of mine!”

As he descended the mountain, whistling a tune, Ezekiel couldn't shake the feeling that something profound had happened to him back up there. He felt a sense of clarity and purpose that he had never experienced before, and he knew that he had been changed.  Flowers seemed to sprout after each step he took, seemed to stick to the sides of his shoes, seemed to swirl up and around the very motes of dust and deep that circled the air.  

…or perhaps it was the first of the tincture, taking hold.

Sedona, vortexes; life.

Either way, he continued whistling as he carried on south, happy at how the day was turning out. 

Polgravia (A retelling with Chatbot AI Assist)

 Phillippe and Victoria were two adventurous..well, kids really, who were always looking for new and exciting experiences. So when they heard about the mysterious old island of Polgravia in the Venetian lagoon, they knew they had to go. Despite the rumors of hidden pitfalls, of overgrown grates, and haunted buildings, they were determined to explore the island for themselves.

They rented a gondola and set out on a sunny afternoon, packed with a picnic basket full of sandwiches and cold drinks. As they approached the shore, Phillippe couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching them. The air was heavy and still, and the island seemed to be shrouded in the thick heat of the day.

No mists, nothing other than boredom lay below their feet. 

Despite their reservations, Phillippe and Victoria disembarked and set up their picnic on the shore. They enjoyed a leisurely meal, taking in the sights and sounds of the island, talking to themselves, and of the future. But after about an hour, Victoria stood up and announced that she was going to explore for a bit. Phillippe watched as she hiked up her big lace gown and wandered off into the interior of the island.

As Phillippe waited for Victoria to return, he began to worry. He gathered up their picnic things and set off in search of her, calling out her name. But as he walked, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching him. Every rustle in the grass or snap of a twig sent a shiver down his spine.

Finally, Phillippe spotted Victoria in the distance. She was standing with her back to him, staring at something in the brush. As he approached, he could see that she was shaking with fear. "We have to get off this island," she said urgently. "There's something here, something that's out to get us."

“Love you..”

“No, we have to go.  NOW!”

Without waiting for a response, Victoria grabbed Phillippe's hand and pulled him back towards the gondola. Phillippe didn't ask questions – he could see the terror in Victoria's eyes and knew that they had to flee. They ran back to the shore as fast as they could, panting and gasping for air. The oarsman was waiting for them, and Phillippe practically threw Victoria into the boat before climbing in himself.

"Go, go!" Phillippe yelled, and the oarsman wasted no time in pushing off from the shore and rowing as fast as he could. As they glided away from the island, Phillippe couldn't help but look back over his shoulder. He half-expected to see some mysterious creature emerging from the mist, but there was nothing there. Just the eerie, overgrown landscape of Polgravia, fading into the distance.

Phillippe and Victoria never spoke of their adventure on the island again, but the memory of that terrifying afternoon stayed with them for the rest of their lives. They never returned to Polgravia, and they never told anyone about what had happened. But deep down, the fellow knew that nothing could ever compare to the terror they had faced on the old island. It was a lesson he would never forget – sometimes, it's better to leave some mysteries unsolved.