I'm Still Here

For the past couple years, I've been building a house, and this has taken up much of my time and energy. Perhaps I will share more photos of the house, someday. Its theme is 'Outside In and Inside Out", which reflects an effort to merge the design of the inside of the house with the outside natural environment.  I've done a lot with wood and rock, and using free or found materials. If I were to give a name to the house, I would call it Windfall, since the monies for the land and the house were given to us.  I still think about story lines, and every so often I will work a little on Clouds Fall to Earth.  Right now I'm wondering if I should write an article to submit to the Dark Mountain Project, the UK group that published my story, “The Tragedy of Bernie the Homeless.”  The article would be on Sound, and explore Dark Mountain's theme of Confluence. To give you a hint of what the article might be about, I'll share a small but amazing occurrence that happened twice recently.  So, I am working on the house, which happens to be in a semi rural and heavily forested area, and happens often to be under the flight path of airliners flying in and out of the Asheville Regional Airport 20 miles or so south. For me, the sound of these machines, even those that are miles above, is pollution. Unwanted sound that steals from the natural sounds of wind in leaves, rainfall, birds and insects.  An airliner passes fairly low overhead, a plane whose engine produces certain frequencies, kind of a mixed whining and whistling.  And then a choir of coyotes not far up the mountainside joins in with a passionate, sorrowful and multi-voiced descant; both high and low parts merging into a confluence of human genius and technology and the hot blood and passion of a pack of wild creatures.  For now I leave you with a photo of a female monarch butterfly that was feeding on my potted milkweed.