The Day the Rhinoceros Jumped Out of My House

It was only a dream. I woke up not in a cold sweat, just simply bemused.

The dream went like this: I'm inside a large building made up of a series of very intricate labyrinths. A large rhino is moving ahead of me. Apparently, it's my job to watch over the beast and not lose track of it.

I notice others moving through labyrinths also following animals, some large, some small. Just letting my eye wander for a split second - and my rhino has disappeared.

I dash all over the place, finally come to the street level of the building where I find a warehouse door and an office. Two men are sitting in the office. I ask them if they've seen a rhinoceros running around. One of them asks me if it was a large rhino or a small one. Large, I tell him.

"Oh, we let him out the door."

"Why did you do that?" I shout. I'm really upset! I pull the chain that rolls up the huge door. Frantic, I run down a ramp and into the streets in search of my rhino.

This is where the dream ends.

A few days after this dream I had an opportunity to attend a dream workshop. A group of twelve participants. The leader asks for volunteers with dreams the group will work on, only three dreams tonight. Quickly, I raise my hand to be one of the volunteers.

This was a very astute group. It was quickly decided that the rhino represented my raw animal-self, whom ordinarily I was able to keep track of and control. However, from time to time it seemed, the rhino was capable of running away with me. The two men, aspects of myself, in charge of keeping the door shut, had fallen down on the job.

I am known to the group as a mild-mannered individual, consderate of others - that sort of characterization. But upon occasion, I could be a rude and wild as that rhino. At times, they stated, I let my rhino out.

Wow! My reaction was, wow. It was a revelation for me. Yet, I was still unaware of these rhino episodes. When did they happen? Why did I go unconscious when they did happen?

My wife, Margot, is a member of this dream group. We went home discussing the problem of my unconscious state when the rhinno would break loose. She knew, but I was still baffled.

Then the very next evening, we had three friends as guests for dinner. The evening was delightful, full of witty conversation that went in all directions.

Toward the end of the evening, I had the impulse to state the obvious, namely, that we were having such a good time talking.

"We've mentioned just about every topic under the sun, except politics and religion."

At that point, the conversation veered to - you guessed it - politics and religion. My wife groaned. She doesn't enjoy it when we men get into these themes, bad mouthing the opposing views as we ramble on.

And when I turned to the only other woman in our intimate circle and asked her about her political views (we had only recently become acquainted) she demured. And I insisted.

"We all must take a stand on these issues. It's important that we stand up and be counted."

Everyone looked at me. Blank faces.

Suddenly, Margot stabbed me with her finger. "Now you've done it!"

"Done what?"

"You've let your rhinoceros out! Get it?"

I felt my face go red. But then I had to smile at myself. Yes, I got it! Finally got it!

50 People Have Signed Up! Do I Hear 100?

In just eight days, fifty people have taken me up on my free offer. Presumably they are all now reading my book, "Numerology For Soul Awakening," hopefully understanding the concepts I've written.

I will be sending all subscribers a monthly newsletter beginning in August. Each month will be devoted to discussing the finer points of interpreting charts, covering the nine main sections of the book one month at a time.

Also, I'll be showing how to make use of this tool in studying compatibility between couples.

There will be space for questions and answers. Already, two subscribers have written me with questions.

Numerology work will be a major focus for me in the coming year. A few hours spent on this work, here and there during the week, will be a welcomed break from moving my fiction forward.

Naturally, I'm excited. I feel energized. This is a good way for an old guy to stay productive.

If you wish to join in, the form to fill out is in the column to the right.

A Food For Thought Story

The other day I was having lunch with a friend and I couldn’t help notice that she finished her meal leaving almost a third of her food on the plate untouched.

I mean her fork never so much as grazed over this portion of her dish. It was as if the food didn’t exist for her. Now I realize I’m easily 40 years her senior—and our eating styles come out of a whole different set of imperatives.

I grew up during the depths of the Great Depression. We were taught to ‘clean our plates.’ In the beginning, doing so was difficult for me. I dawdled over my food, was labeled a persnickety eater. I pushed the veggies around, picking my way through the debris I had created. My mom was beside herself, not just annoyed.

“Think of the poor Chinese kids,” she’d tell me. And I tried to understand what she meant. But I was only four. I didn’t know anything about Chinese kids. None lived on my block. We lived on East 2nd Street in Brooklyn.

Then one Saturday my mother decided I was old enough to go the matinee movies. My sister, four and a half years older than me, was to take me. It was a treat I hadn’t earned. Only years later did I realize the reward was my mother’s—a chance to have some time for herself.

I can still remember the excitement I felt as I toddled alongside my big sister. All the older kids talk all week long about the previous Saturday’s double feature. And now I was going to experience this very mysterious ritual. Over the next couple of years, I attended many Saturday matinees. But this first occasion is indelibly imprinted in my memory.

A Tom Mix cowboy picture was the first film. My eyes were glued to the black and white images flickering across the huge screen, everything bigger than life.
Cowboys on their horses galloping across open land studded with sagebrush, performing heroic deeds, brandishing six-shooters, Indians and Bad Men dropping to the dusty ground, gyrating with dramatic abandon. Everything happened with a lot of to-do.

The second feature was a Stooge Brothers’ slapstick comedy. Most of that went passed me. Not because I was too stupid to get the jokes. But because I was preoccupied with terror from what I had just seen marching across the silver screen.


I’m referring to the news clips that were shown between the two feature films. Outside of radio, newspapers and magazines, this is how people got the latest happenings. Pathé News introduced the news with a fanfare of music calculated to put one in a state of alarm.

And what I saw that first time I have never forgotten. The year was 1936. The Japanese Imperial Army was invading China. Now I was seeing real Chinese kids. I saw mobs of children, women and old men running for their lives before an onslaught of canon fire. Bombs burst all around them as they fled, terrified, their eyes rolling. I saw many of them fall to the ground, wounded and dying, the city in flames.

My God, I sucked in my breath. So this is what happens when you don’t clean your plate. It was a stern lesson I was getting.

That evening at supper my mother was surprised to say the least. Sobered from my matinee encounter, I silently and hastily ate my food. Every bit of it. No prompting was necessary. Not then, nor ever since.

Of course, by the time I was ten I realized that the connection I had made was a false conclusion. But by then my eating pattern was firmly established. I never talked about the false revelation that had come to me. And no one had to badger me into cleaning my plate.

Summer Time

It's a hot, sultry evening here in the Shenandoah Valley. Eight o'clock and the light is beginning to fade. It used to be the time when us men trudged in from the fields sweat pouring out every orifice, too tired to talk, eager for a swig of ale and a plate of vittles. We could hear the women folk chatting, their voices rising and falling like angel birds.

I live on what once was a 250 acre family farm, cut down to 5 acres. The Wine family lived in this house more than 100 years. Evenings such as this, I can almost hear their voices, their shouts and joshings. All the brothers looking as shiny as peas in a pod. This is how I imagine them.

The house is quiet tonight. Only myself and Margot, my wife. She's upatairs in bed reading, the fan wafting a small breeze over her unclothed body. Even in our time, the house once rang with voices. Grandma Margaret, our son Sorrel, our former house partners Barbara & Charlie and their daughter Jessie; and later there was Solly, Tracy, Cee Cee, Renai, Mitch. They're all gone now, some to the Great Beyond, the others scattered around the globe. Just us here now. Us two with only our memories. Margot stays busy with the garden and her art. She is a world class artist. And I keep playing the laptop keyboard with three, sometimes four fingers, stringing words together into some kind of pattern that tells a stroy.

The night is closing us in. Outside, our bird friends are settling in for the night, making their last calls to each other. Amazing how suddenly they become active after the heat of the day, active for only a few minutes before the dark. And the baby steers in my neighbor's field bellowing, moaning you might say. I think they are young enough to be calling for their moms. They were moved into that field a few days ago, haven't gotten used to the reality of no mom.

The cheery birds on the one hand and the sad calves on the other, slowly hunkering down for the night. And me - somewhere in between those two states. My mood is ripe for turning to work on my novel. The people, conjured out of my imagination - my friends, if you will, are awaiting me.

Ta...

A Fellow Writer Passed Away Today

My dear friend, Shannon Roquemore, died this morning some time before noon. She was only 29 years old. She and five other friends just returned from Peru, visiting Machu Picchu and other places for about ten days. Full of high spirits from the mystical journey, she phoned me while driving home from the airport full of plans for her next book, which she said would be focused on pedagogical themes. Her first book had just been published. "Images From A Creation Myth" tells the story of her journey to God from childhood through maturity. Her book is intended to inspire Christian school teachers to bring into their work, their personal life experience and the search for their mystical connection. She was a teacher at Veritas Christian Academy in North Carolina.

Here are her own words about her book:

"In this memoir of a teacher's education and spiritual awakening, Classical educator Shannon Roquemore takes the reader on a journey from her childhood conversion to Christianity through her graduate work in the "Great Books" and beyond, bringing to light the essence of what education is meant to be: an illumination of God and his dance with humanity, and an invitation to the soul to awaken. Ultimately, Roquemore's story becomes her primary teaching tool as she examines her own courtship with God and applies it to the individuals in her classroom. For all those who have resisted divorcing their formal education from their identity as a soul, Images From a Creation Myth restores the soul to its rightful place as the beneficiary of education."

She wrote extraordinary beautiful poetry. She was dauntless in her engagement with life.

She died abruptly, was diagnosed with leukemia; but there were bleeding complications that caused her quick death after being hospitalized only two days. No one will ever know the real cause, I'm afraid.

We met four years ago under unusual circumstances. Shannon wrote about our meeting in her introduction to my book Open the River. A beautiful being, she was tall and slim, with long reddish hair that flowed down past her shoulders. A narrow, lengthy face, her complexion reminding one of Elizabethan days. She had a soft, sweet voice that approved of everything. "This is good," she always said. When she spoke, her body tended to undulate in a way that caused her to seem like a long stemmed flower swaying in the breeze. She loved everyone, and especially her retriever, Sundown. She loved and understood beauty in all its forms and all its subtle appearances. I will never forget her.

A Challenging Review

A reader of my memoir, "Open the River," that deals with grief and mourning over the loss of my son, has written a painfully negative review, posted on my Lulu site. Painful because of his own terrible grief. His only daughter, aged 7, was killed in an automobile accident less than a year ago.

My book fell short of his expectations. Worse, it made him angry. Angry, because I wrote at too great a length, to his lights, about my experiences learning how to be a sailor. After a horrible year of intense pain and sorrow, I took up sailing perhaps as a way of escape [this is my reader's contention] - although, for me, being on the water accompanied by my son's spirit, brought me great solace.

I wrote an email to him expressing my deep sympathy. I know what he is going through. Also, I spoke of my appreciation for his candid review. At first his words took me by surprise. So many readers have written me of their positive experiences. But after reading his review a second time, the pain and anger, the sorrow he expressed took me back to my first year of mourning, and I found myself re-visiting the old wound.

The state of healing I had accomplished from writing this memoir, like a scab, was stripped away. Raw feeling came through once more. It may seem odd to you, especially if you have not had to survive the loss of a child, that this reaccurance of raw pain could be received as a blessing. Maybe I am masochistic by nature? I really don't believe so.

Over the years - he died 14 years ago - sorrow can grow to be a bit too sweet. Sweet-sorrow, like an overgrown rose bush, can blanket the more vital feelings.

So, I'm grateful to my critic, my friend - we have begun an exchange of emails.

Today Was A Good Day

The writer in me is happy today.
Put down about 1,000 words added to Miguel the Barber.
Did this in the afternoon. Celebrated with a 4-mile bike ride. For an old geezer like me, that's a marathon.
The morning was spent house cleaning. Margot and I washed surfaces, put away things lying about - a general straitening up - why? Having guests next three days, friends from Florida.
We see them about twice a year. Bob and Ellen, both into metaphysics, Jungian psychology, spiritual growth. They always bring interesting CDs, DVDs, books, pamphlets. We sit around and talk over what they have shown us, get carried away by their enthusiams. Bob is only 78, so he can have as many enthusiams as he wishes.
Then we picked strawberries. Margot's patch is a wonder. Everyday, the cute red berries look away, try to hide among their leaves - but we find them.

Two visiters to my web site, or here, took my up my offer - the free pdf of Numerology for Soul Awakening. Another reason to be happy.
But I ought not to need reasons to be happy. So, I'll just say I'm pleased.

Sharing myself like this to an unknown audience, I've never felt comfortable doing. This is a new departure. Maybe I'll become more open. I tend to hide my emotions. I believe writers tend toward hiding themselves. We make our characters do all the emotional work. They are the brave ones.

10:10 P.M. - time for bed. Night all.

Entering the Stream

All the thoughts in my head are this very moment pushing and shoving for attention.

"Pick me!" "No, me!" "I'm your best bet!"

And so on.

I sip my coffee while I let them fight it out.

When I pay heed to my own mind, this is what happens. My reason for writing fiction. When I'm with my characters, working from their angle and mental chaos, my own mind is at peace.

I guess this is what a certain form of meditation is all about. Writing gives my mind a focus. My chaos stays in the background. It's there all right. Waiting to barge in at any moment. My fingers race over the keyboard eluding the wild ride they intend for me. If I stop who knows what?

This is it for today.

Stay tuned.