Here's a little bit of poetry from the past...
11 Feb 92.
Find your roar,
It is waiting for you,
There in the wind.
Where your fears will escape.
Let them go,
The wind is strong.
Thank a deity that I have kept a journal for most of the last 20 years. (Of course, Beatrix burned one up, but I think I've captured most of the salient creativity that I can muster in new volumes since.)
I've recently been making some major adjustments to my life, and like a wondrous ship coming into the harbor, an old friend and I have re-established contact. I've missed her over the years - she really knew me well - and losing touch with her back then was a major chink in my armor. A loose thread that was never tugged upon.
Until today.
Sometimes you forget that the souls you've encountered make you who you are in the end. So long ago, "S" taught me about being genuinely sweet, being nice in the face of meanness, and being comfortable in your own skin. She had a boldness to her character that was infinitely attractive. I'd forgotten some of our chats from 2 decades ago, but I am now reminded. When I was under threat of going off to war, she was a tremendous comfort to my sense of security, about friends and love, and enduring loyalty. (Almost the dialectical opposite of Beatrix, in retrospect.)
"XO, anything on COMMS."
"See'nix, Klargen. Social media only."
"I thought so. Very well."
I stared at the house where Beatrix spent her early childhood, in the shadows of pine, madrona and eucalyptus trees that had grown much over the decades. We were in a hover, and the sun was just down, but light hung on for a few minutes. A local hatch opened - they know I like that - and I could smell the open Pacific on the wind. Just below us, south of the house, a bonfire burned and I could hear a drum circle. Could almost smell the local Bolinas weed... and I sighed. (I knew I was finally saying goodbye. I made a mental note to ritually burn my last copy of the novel when we got back to Seattle, and start over.) The XO 'almost' smiled at me from the NAV console. He sensed my mood.
"NAV, set a new course. Wheel us away from here. Northwest."
"Issa blurn pen'cho brap, Klargen?" The local hatch closed with that now familiar 'fffip-smieeck"sound and my ears popped just a bit.
"Adjust for Mount Fuji, Japan. Summit, please. WEPS, configure for counter-interception and stealth. We don't want that X-radar catching a glimpse of the Tinglev's speed." Not like they'd have any idea 'who' we were, just being cautious.
"Blinx, Klargen." MAIN switched to pulse-defensive sub-radar, away from visual mode. It's better for us, defensively speaking. Dozens of human aircraft became visible in this mode, criss-crossing the skies ahead. Plotted trajectories made the screen appear like skews of multi-colored yarn had been carefully unraveled in airspace.
The Rotatey Chair sucked me in and we climbed to 48K. My crew was busy again. SCIENCE located several pods of whales well off the coast before we transitioned to supersonic flight, and they were busy with COMMS recording the songs. The XO meandered over to me and braced himself against the armrest as we accelerated. He pushed on our private frequency with a question.
"Klargen, are we revisiting some glorious memories, rather than bittersweet ones?"
"Aye, XO. I'm tired, so exhausted, of those wounding memories of Beatrix. I had hoped maybe we could reconcile our friendship, have a smile together, but it probably won't ever happen. She said "Not in this lifetime," remember?"
"Blinx, Klargen. I recall from the mem-share."
"MAIN to visual, please." Soft yellow light filled the bridge.
The endless Pacific rushed beneath us, we'd caught up with the sun in a few seconds. Soon we passed over the tsunami-damaged northeast coast of Honshu, and SCIENCE got very busy when they noted the ambient radiation levels. We could see Fuji-san already. It was spectacular, as it always was.
"NAV, position us to the north side of the caldera at 3 meters relative to summit."
"Gling brap blim, Klargen."
"XO, you have the conn. I'll be in my quarters for a few niptuks."
The Rotatey Chair eased its grip on me and the Tinglev had to adjust considerably to allow me to walk during our deceleration. I found and donned a heavy mylar-looking jacket and pants, and put on some bright red boots with, oddly, Vibram soles. Warm gloves, made of a material I have troubled describing - like conformal whitish felt, perhaps.
When I came back onto the bridge, MAIN was showing a group of Japanese climbers just a few yards off our 'bow.'
"XO, we have a drop-hatch, correct?"
"Aye, Klargen. In Powerplant sub-level 1."
"And it can be opened even if we stay cloaked, right? We don't have to reveal ourselves?"
"Aye."
"Then let's do this. WEPS, prep for EMF suppression of any random cell phones or digital cameras."
"Blinx, Klargen."
The last time I was on the top of Mt Fuji was 15 years ago, almost to the day. I was so excited to climb it that I made the ascent from Kawaguchiko 5th Station to the summit in 4 hours and 25 minutes. I had seen depictions on stamps that I had collected as a small boy. It was in my 'bucket list' before there was a term for that.It was brutally cold in October that year, but I just didn't care. I was wearing insulated Carrhardts and a few layers underneath. Solar cells on my glove-tops kept my fingers warm. I had been entertained all the way up the mountain by a new friend - a Hong Kong policeman, an Irishman, of all things - revealing crazy, sometimes disturbing stories of his career in such a foreign place. We remained friends for a few years, I stayed in his lavish high-rise apartment when I visited HK, but we lost touch around the millennium. I'm sure we'll meet again someday. Maybe on a mountaintop.
The drop-hatch was aligned vertically, I noticed. Easier for exits and entrances. It opened quickly and I jumped out and landed kinda hard. I heard the hatch close behind me and an older Japanese man heard it and turned back at me, eyes wide. I hadn't been there a second before. I winked at him and he laughed.
"You not there, then there," he said in fairly good English. "How?"
"Magic."
He laughed and muttered "Usso." (You lie.) He pointed his climbing stick at me.
"A kind of magic, then."
He looked at my garb and smiled deeply. "No such thing as these clothings here in Nippon."
"Yeah, we don't have them in the US, either."
"More magic, then?"
"Hai. Something like that." We began walking to the weather station at the true peak, about a quarter-mile off, and he quizzed me about my sudden appearance at the top of the Yoshida Trail. I didn't let him know much, only that I'd climbed Fuji-san before, very quickly, in my younger days.
"Taisetsu na koto jah nakata," he mumbled under his breath, (Nothing of importance) but I could tell he was a little razzled. We finally introduced ourselves and made our way to the granite spire, past a giggling group of young ladies - looked like Tokyo office-ladies on a day tour - on their way down. Mr Ushimaya told me had been an engineer for a major car company, and was now retired. His wife had died years before, and he had never had children. He lived in his house with his younger sister and her family in the outskirts of Yokohama. I gave him a general background, but nothing recent, for obvious reasons.
I knew the Tinglev was very close, but I couldn't see it. My signal for the hatch to open would be a crisp military salute, so they were watching my every move. Maneuvering around the weather station and it's bristle of antennas had to be taxing on the NAV crew-members. I do trust them.
I touched the granite spire, and started backing off when Mr Ushimaya chided me with an "Ochiso!"
(It means 'something is on the edge and about to fall,' and implies someone has to do something about it.)
The 'something' was me, my body. As I fell, the drop hatched opened, and scooped me up. I had fallen, but got back up quickly. The hatch remained open.
Ushimaya-san peered into the Tinglev's sub-level, laughed very hard, knowing now what my magic was. We bowed deeply at each other, and the hatch closed. I never even had to do the salute.
Back on the bridge, in uniform again, the XO pressed that he thought that my exchange with Ushimaya-san was quite funny. So hard to read their laughter unless they tell me about it directly.
We accelerated away to the east, not even very quickly, and I nearly fell over from the acceleration before I could get to the Rotatey Chair.
"A dreamer of pictures,
He runs in the night.
You see us together
Chasing the moonlight (with)
My Cinnamon Girl."
Neil Young's impeccable 'Cinnamon Girl."
"NAV, let's get back to Archuleta Mesa Heavy Repair Facility (AMHRF). The Tinglev needs a check-up. Can't wait anymore."
"Blinx, Klargen. Any preferences?"
"None at all, XO. Keep us away from the Triangles, if possible."
"Aye, Klargen." The XO began pushing to NAV and WEPS and SCIENCE, letting them know the idiosyncracies of how to sneak in there unseen by even the reverse-engineered systems that the US Government had figured out.
We all knew what a mess we were in for at AMHRF. The stress level went up in the crew, and the XO relayed to me in private. I knew.
That place is a zoo. Literally. You really have to wonder why molecular biochemists live in a town as small as Dulce, NM. I know why.
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