Front Porch Rambles

Artist! Writer! Practice your skills. Read something, pen something, sketch something still. Swiftly unraveled,  Long work to re-bind, The tenuous strands 'tween thumb, fingers and mind. Let not the dreams slip, Through unclenching hands. Guide them, direct them. Make patterns of sand. Pay no mind to mistakes, They belong, let them be. They're trees in the forest you're trying to see. Make ready your keyboard, Sketch paper and ink, You're readier now than you may ever think.

It was late.  The sky blue quilt that lay kicked and crumpled at the foot of the bed glowed in the dim blue light from the digital numbers. 12:59.  Depending on the accuracy of the clock's atomic guarantee, it may or may not be Monday in the next time zone.  It certainly was, here. He counted back the hours from his wife's early departure for work. Five and a half hours still remained before diapers would need changing or eggs scrambling. To most this would be a regrettably late bedtime, but he knew he could easily spend the next 90 minutes tapping away at the keyboard. Or, admittedly, staring into space for indeterminate lengths of time as his mind scribbled and erased madly.  The words had been coming easily but what did he have to show but some autobiographical musings and thinly guised Star Trek fan fiction?  Was he getting anywhere? Where was he even going? So far, he'd let inspiration take the wheel, ignoring the terror of the blank white page for long e...

The dog pouted when told to remain inside, but Jeremy was tired of getting up in the middle of a thought to let the indecisive creature back in.  He needed his thoughts to flow smoothly, and his fingers to be uninterrupted. He was never an excellent typist, although he had once taken a class and fared well enough.  That was all fine and good though.  He didn't need sixty words a minute, he just needed the right words. He had been an avid reader since The Pokey Little Puppy and adored Probe, Scrabble , and any other word game he could find.  He would sneak peeks at his grandpa's crosswords, half-filled with scrunched letters. The nondescript ballpoint pen sat atop the paper like a silent guardian.  Mostly the puzzles were references he didn't understand, but he listened when adults talked to each other and had picked up some trivial knowledge from before his time.  He had never dared sully the clean newsprint squares, but in those times he'd felt empower...

The stuffy night air hit him when he opened the front door and when he pushed open the screen it was if some enormous dog sat in the darkness panting in his face.  The symphony of tree frogs and cicadas almost masked the low rumble of this highway and that, teasing him with sounds that would only be accompanied by silence in the rural area where he grew up.  The mosquitoes reminded him of home too, they thought they'd all died and gone to the bayou.  Jeremy took the itchy bumps as his penance for the sin of smoking.  It was a fondness he was supposed to be overcoming, as his personal assistant app reminded him this morning for the sixth day in a row.  Another midnight found him looking for his lighter in last night's pajamas, and gathering change for the single cigar he'd walk eight blocks to purchase from the 24-hour convenience store.  The walk eased his guilt at never quite getting his exercise regiment off the ground, and also served as further penance....