274

People flooded in to the estate sale, not in search of deals, but rather to finally get a chance to look in the house.  It was a huge, old, brick mansion that had gone through many unfortunate hands after leaving the original owner's family and had fallen into shameful disrepair.  It had been mutilated into seven apartments and had a smell of old cigarette smoke, mothballs, and wet cat.  It was still, however, huge and old and surrounded by tales of former owners' misdeeds.  Current owner, too, in whose hands the house had been for less than a year.

273

"The House of Blaroch should find it uproariously funny to find me here, wallowing in the muck, should they come riding this way."  The youngest prince of the House of Karnin tried to free his foot from the mud swallowing his leather riding boot without removing only his stockinged foot.  Meanwhile, his squire tried not to cry.

Prince Karn saw the fear gripping his squire.  "Here, Marro, give me a hand, would you?  The horses won't run away, now they've found some nibbles."  It was the high-strung horse Karn shouldn't have ridden so fast in unfamiliar territory that had given him this trouble to start.  Marro dutifully lent Karn his arm, bracing as best as his skinny legs would let him on the driest patch of ground nearby.

272

The wind picked up, blowing with it the scent of snow.  Rolling clouds tumbled across the sky, steel blue and gray and suddenly stuck by sun, reminding the world that it still shone, no matter perspective.  Dried leaves rattled in the trees and the weakest tumbled to join their brethren on the ground.  Dark would come fast this day, but not before a fleeting, blazing show of a sunset.

271

If you ask yourself what you want in life, you probably think in terms of things.  I want a house.  I want a car.  I want a good job.  I want to travel.  But what you should ask yourself are what feelings you want to cultivate.  You may have misplaced desires for certain items, when you really want a feeling you think the item will give you.  My example is that I want (in no particular order): mystery, adventure, comfort, security.  There are physical manifestations that may induce those feelings, but until I understand what feelings I want, I cannot truly direct my life.

Step 1: make a list of the feelings you want to cultivate in your life.

The next question to ask yourself is why?  The answer lies in your childhood.  Ever wonder why people cannot get out of ruts?  Why some people cannot seem to escape the lives in which they were raised?  Why some people live the same, tragic lives as their parents?  It is because they are trying to re-create their feelings from childhood.  What was your life growing up?  What memories keep coming back to you?  Think of both the good and the bad.

Step 2: brainstorm a list of ten memories from your childhood that pop into your mind (even if they seem silly, irrelevant or disturbing.)

Don't believe that you are influenced by what happened first in your life?  Consider what toys you think are awesome.  Do you still get excited when you see one in a thrift store, garage sale, online auction or when they re-release those toys today?  Heck, yeah!  What furniture do you think is awesome?  I want a sofa with low, flat arms and removable cushions because that's what we had when I was growing up.  Eventually, we got a new sofa, but the black, nubby sofa was the first, and that's what I want.  Not in black, and not necessarily nubby, but one that elicits the feelings I had when my family had that sofa.  The first thing I'll do is make a fort with the cushions.

Review your list from Step 2.  Do any of your memories elicit the feelings you listed in Step 1?  If "yes" all the way down, great!  If the feelings you get from your memory list are not on your feelings list, you will have some work to do, but you are already on your way.

270

It was the folded pieces of washed tinfoil in her dead grandmother's kitchen pantry that put Samantha over the edge.  Picturing how her grandmother had used, rinsed and carefully put away the tinfoil for a future time she would never see caused Sam to burst into tears.  Even the word "tinfoil" was her grandmother's; her own mother teased her for using such an old-fashioned word for "aluminum foil".  Sunk to the floor holding the folded pieces, Sam cried and, in an oddly detached way, thought about why it made her so sad.  Missing her grandmother?  Certainly.  There were always loving words and compliments unsaid, questions unasked.  She cried for herself.  No, she thought, she cried for humans.  Humans who lived as if they would continue to live forever.  Humans who set aside for the future.  Humans who had plans in the calendar.  Humans who had saved candles because they were too nice to burn for any "regular" occasion and waited, unburned, perhaps forever.

269

Most of the beach by the city's waterfront was disgusting.  You first notice the human debris, like plastic and broken glass and ripped shopping bags tangled in weeds.  The larger human debris is completely disheartening, like tires and bicycle parts and dumped appliances.  The industrial debris is more disturbing and harder to pinpoint, usually, but in most locations, it has been causing algae blooms, petroleum smells, and even black goo to wash repeatedly up on the shore and muck up the water.  The natural debris, while natural, still assaults the senses, especially the dead fish, rats, and sometimes even larger animals.  You could argue that it is not really natural debris because they were killed by the industrial debris, but, still, they break down eventually.

There is, however, a secret beach, where the currents seem to circulate independently of the polluted water from the city.  No smell, no garbage, no black goo.  Occasionally a dead fish, but not often.  The sand is soft and still safe to walk on with bare feet.  The water is very shallow and warms up faster than most other parts along the lake shore.  It is as perfect as it can get along this particular body of water.

268

Georgina missed the part of her life where she had been good-looking.  Granted, it hadn't been for long, but she didn't realize it until a decade past; that was the way it went with her.  Realizations came suddenly and far too late.  At least, she thought at her reflection, they came eventually.  She patted her graying hair, which was also thinning and thickening at the same time, before another realization: it didn't matter.  Georgina felt that realization release a weight which dropped to the floor with a clunk.  It didn't matter.  She was light-headed with relief.  A narrow tunnel she had been traveling down that ended in darkness now opened up into a rotunda with exits on all sides pointing to sunlight.  It didn't matter.  Hair, face, skin, shape, color, clothes, breakfast, likes, dislikes, opinions: none of it mattered.  Better late than never, she thought, leaving her house and pointedly not taking her phone or brushing her hair.