Gabrielle’s Magical Notebook

I’m standing in the courtyard preparing to go in to see the King of All. I’ve put on all my best clothes and brushed my hair til it shines. There are dozens of people in the courtyard with me, but I feel all alone in my nervousness. All alone but for the butterflies that have crowded into my stomach.

I know that when I enter the throne room the King of All will be sitting on his throne. This is what I’ve been told by all who I’ve asked. He will sit on his throne of mastery that rises from highest peak of the tallest mountain. The throne is seven stories high and made from a single stone that had been found buried at the bottom of the ocean. There is a platform at his feet where I will stand to make my petition.

I won’t look at him while I speak. I am to look at the floor and speak my piece. I have been told that if one stares at the floor long enough the pattern will reflect the face of the mighty King seated above you, but only two people have stood before the King of All long enough to see the reflection. Their petitions must have been very impressive to stand so long before such a mighty King. Some say a minute of his time is more precious than most people’s lives.

I have memorized my petition down to the syllable. I know exactly what I will say and how I will say it. I do not hope to impress the King; that would certainly never happen. But I do want to speak my whole piece. If I hadn’t memorized it I’m sure I would forget large parts of it. And how will the King grant what I ask if he doesn’t know all that I’m asking?

Not that I expect him to grant my petition, of course. I have been told that very few of the requests that are brought to the King are ever answered. Surely he should not trouble himself with all these little petitions. The King is busy with matters of the Universe; he is far too important for my request.

The doors before me open and I am ushered forward. I feel the press of the people behind me who are still waiting. They are pushing forward to see what is inside. I walk through the doors into a hall as tall as the sky and as grand as sunshine on the ocean. I am repeating my petition as I walk to the door I am ushered to. The beauty and grandeur is close to taking all my words away. I step to the door, a very simple door, and prepare to stand before the King of All.

The door opens on a room that takes my breath away. It is simple. It is cozy and warm. It’s a room where I would sit at my ease with a book and a cup of coffee. Surely this isn’t the King’s throne room. Surely this is the room I’m to wait in until the King’s pleasure. I walk into the room and sit down on a chair that seems made for me.

Sitting across from me is a man. He looks up when I sit down and my generic greeting flies from my lips. His eyes, his eyes are twinkling at me with wisdom, power, strength, warmth and laughter. Those eyes in that face. And he’s letting me sit in his presence.

I am too frozen to even tumble out of my chair to the floor where I belong. The King of All pushes a steaming mug across the table toward me.

“Coffee?”, he asks.

The stars were so pretty that night. Cloudless and cold, the sky hung above me and never noticed me watching it. It felt good to be invisible. The sky didn’t care how I looked or what I was thinking about. It wouldn’t ask my opinion or about my day. The sky was too big to notice me, too far away to care about just one more speck staring up at it.

I hugged my jacket closer around me and tried to hold onto the feeling of invisible. I’m not here I’m not important, but the sky was beginning to notice. Perhaps I had been staring too hard. I ducked under the picnic table and wasn’t there as loud as possible.

“I’m not here!”, I shouted at the sky.

“Look someplace else! Go far away with your bigness and your stars.”, I pleaded.

“I just wanted to see. I didn’t mean you to find me. You were so far away I didn’t think it would matter.”

I pulled my jacket over my head as the sky came down to earth.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “ Please go away.”

I hid my face and waited to be forgotten. Soon, soon the sky would remember it was big and cold and far away and it would go back up and forget the speck who had dared to stare. I breathed deep and quiet and waited.

Between one breath and the other I felt the picnic table lifted away.

“Hello,” said the sky.

I grew wings today and flew up into the sky. The sun kissed my face as I soared towards the few clouds dotting the great blueness. I laughed my delight to the stars and tasted wind on my tongue. I flew into the midst of a flock of geese and distracted them from their journey with a game of tag. We played together until the old gander called them to order and pointed their beaks southward again. I sat down to rest on a cloud and buried my face deep into the sweet wetness. It smelled clean, like newly washed dishes and felt like cool mist off a fountain when you’re dancing through in your clothes. After a few minutes the sun burned the cloud away and I fell toward the ground, faster than the fastest roller coaster. I flapped my great wings once, twice, slowed then stopped. And as I hung in sky like a small, dull star I looked down to the ground for the first time.

The land looked so big from up here. Once I had lived where the land was big. It rolled and dipped and grew trees until I couldn’t see the sky. I had loved that land, but then I had moved to where the land was still and it was the sky that was big. The sky filled my vision everywhere I looked; it was the defining view of my new world and I grew to love it. But now I was looking down at the land and from up here I found that it was beautiful.

From my place in the sky I could see all the different colors of the land and how they were put together with rivers and streams the seams in this magnificent quilt. Field sat next to field with roads between them like feuding children at a dinner table. Towns sprang from nowhere like an ambush and then stopped with no warning. I traced roads, lanes and highways with my eyes and saw the wondrous pictures they drew. From here in the sky I could see my home for the valley it was and I saw its place in the land. Where before it was all inconvenience and humid summers now I could see how pretty the valley was and how much importance it gave to the rest of the land.

I flapped slowly in the sky and thought. I started towards the ground, but stopped when I realized I wouldn’t be able to see it if I landed and walked along it. I flew some more through the air, but the ground was so pretty I couldn’t relish the sky like I had before. The wind whispered through my hair and the ground called my name and still I stayed where I was, my brow puckered and my heart restless.

Once upon a time a young walked into the kitchen with a great purpose. He got out a saucepan and a spoon and set to work. He was making cocoa for a queen.

The young man got a glass bottle of milk out of the refridgerator. The bottle was cool and smooth against his hand. He poured some milk into the pan, white into black, cold liquid into warm metal. He put the milk away and adjusted the heat of the stove. It had to be just right. He was making cocoa for a queen and it had to be perfect.

From a cupboard the young man got a container of dark brown cocoa powder. Air puffed into the container as he snapped the plastic lid off and a cloud of bitter powder floated out to tickle his face. He added some cocoa to the milk and gave it a stir. Then he added some more and stirred again. He stirred, the floating powder dark against the blue-white milk, the earth smell of cocoa lingering in the air. The young man added more whiteness to the saucepan in the form of sugar, the grains falling immediatley to the bottom and scratching against the spoon and the pan. He stirred in quick, sharp stirs, the milk and cocoa powder making brown bubbles that danced on the surface of the liquid.

The sugar dissolved and the young man added bright vanilla, musky cinnamon and sweet nutmeg and stirred, stirred, stirred. Then he poured himself a sample and tasted it. It was warm, creamy, the sweet and bitter blending into something entirely new. The spices sat on top of the bitter sweet, part of it, but distinct. The young man rolled the swallow around his mouth and put down the spoon. He was satisfied. The queen would enjoy this cocoa.

He carefully poured the warm drink into a mug the color of fresh-picked apples. The drink filled the mug up to its brim, a bit of steam coming off the top. The young man lifted the mug, enjoying the warmth on his hands, and carried it into the other room.

This room was simple and simply furnished. The walls were a light, nuetral color and the furniture was sparse. There was only a bed with metal rails on each side, a small table next to the bed and a chair. Propped up in the bed was a queen.

As the young man approached she opened her eyes and smiled at him. The sun slanted in the window and made her white hair glow. She seemed delighted to see him though he’d only been gone as long as it had taken to prepare the cocoa. The young man approached the bed and the queen with a smiled he reserved just for her. Gently, tenderly, he lifted one of her hands and wrapped it around the mug.

“Here, Grandma”, he said, “I made you some cocoa.”

(This story is dedicated to Adiel who must get tired of me making her cry.)

The words flooded back into her mouth, wet and wonderful. For so long she had walked around dry and empty of all worthwhile words. She had tried not to say anything in that time because, no matter how hard one tries, when the words are gone there is simply nothing to say. Your mouth moves and you try to form thoughts, but all that walks out of your mouth is gibberish.

She often wondered where her words went when they weren’t in her mouth. Maybe they skipped off to vacation in the sun. She imagined a heavy dictionary sun-bathing on a tropical beach, the waves crashing in the distance. Her words would get warm and a little burnt in that hot, tropical sun. Usually her words were thoughtful and often tried hard to be wise, but who knows what goes on in the mind of a large dictionary when it’s let out into the sun next to a drink with one of those little umbrellas. Maybe her words had been in the tropics, but when they came back they didn’t look tanned.

Perhaps they went on a skiing trip to some snowy mountain top somewhere. She imagined the dictionary flying down a mountainside, the wind ruffling its pages, a fuzzy scarf flapping in the wind. She imagined the rush and the wind would be exhilarating to her words. They so often wanted to fly. Maybe if they hit a rock on those skis this would be their chance. But when her words came back they didn’t look windswept or chapped so it must not have been skiing.

Maybe they didn’t go anywhere. Maybe they were where they always were, but she was the one who was lost. She was in the file room of her words and she just couldn’t find the right file cabinet. The room was surprisingly well lit considering how the rest of her consciousness was lit with candles. The file cabinet was right in the middle of the room. There was even a spotlight on it, but perhaps she had just kept looking over it. She looked through her memories, her thoughts, her beliefs about kittens and all her fond memories of cheese sauce, but never could seem to find any words.

Whichever, whatever, wherever her words had been when she couldn’t find them they were back now. She settled down to enjoy them, savoring their flavor and letting them roll around her mouth before sending them out through her lips. Perspicuity. Mazel tov. Balcony. Partial. Tertiary. Bathroom. Transcendent. Pub….

“Why?”

She flung the question at him, defiant and fierce. It struck him right in the face and she felt no shame. She glared angry daggers at him and willed him to be far away from her and the question beating on his face.

It was not an ugly question though it could have been. If it hung there much longer it would surely turn ugly. She had touched it with her filthy mouth; if it wasn’t horrid now it soon would be. Everything she touched turned ugly. The flowers and the pictures and the song. She had so much wanted them to be beautiful. She had wanted them to prove that maybe she was beautiful. Now she just shoved them further back into the closet and hoped no one would notice them. They were ugly, almost as ugly as she was.

He wasn’t ugly. He was the most beautiful anything she had ever seen. Hard and soft, he defied description. She’d tried one time, but that had turned ugly just like everything else and she had burned it, the sparks floating up, bright against the night until they had turned to ash and fallen back to earth. She looked at him now and knew that any attempt at description she could craft in the next hundred years would never be sufficient. He even made her question look lovely.

He reached up with his master hands and plucked her question from the air. She looked away, shame making tears prick at her eyes. Why had she flung that question at him? Why had she made him notice her, made him look at her with those eyes deeper and more mysterious than the ocean? Why wouldn’t he just walk away like she knew he wanted to?

She looked back at him, hoping to catch a glimpse of his back as he turned away from her. But instead of his back she found herself starring at the side of his face. He was doing something with her question in his master hands. He hadn’t left yet. Not yet.

Just as she thought maybe she should walk away he turned to her. In his hands her question had been transformed. No longer was it all sharp edges and bitterness. Now it was a flower the color of peace, the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen next to him. He took a step toward her and tucked the peace flower in her hair. He cupped her face in his master hands and looked deep into her shallow mud-puddle eyes with his ocean-deep eyes.

“Because,” he said, “I wanted to.”

“But-” she started, but before she could finish her half-formed protest he caught her word. He crumpled it in one hand and dropped it to the sand.

“No,” he said “Not but.”

Then he took her hand in his and together they walked toward the sun. Behind them the dropped word shriveled in the light and faded all away.

I picked a dandelion today. I was out walking the city streets in the spring sunshine enjoying the breeze and color. I almost passed the dandelion without noticing it. It was hidden in a clump of tall grass at the entrance of an alleyway. The flower appeared to be expecting me, waiting so patiently, so I bent down and picked it and stuck in it my hair. I walked on, happy, smiling, with a flower in my hair.

The people I passed all gazed after me with odd expressions. I walked on by without pause. One woman stopped me and asked why I had put a dandelion in my hair.

“It’s such a nasty, common flower,” she said. “A weed. Why go through the trouble and bother?”

I took the flower from my hair and examined it. It was brilliant yellow and sweet, sweet green. The petals were small, perfectly formed and tightly packed. The green fringe around the base of the petals was elegance itself. Standing there, in the sunlight, I turned the flower in my fingers and decided it was beautiful. I told the woman so.

“But,” she said, “It’s so very common. There is nothing special about dandelions.”

I thought about this, the flower in my hand.

“Really?” I asked her, “How can you be sure?”

And I tucked the flower back into my hair and walked away in the sun.

I went into my father’s library one day to borrow a book. I sought wisdom and knew he had shelves full of wisdom and learning and experience.

I entered the warm room and paused to breathe the scent of books. The years caught up in pages and binding require a way to make themselves known. The years slip through the pages like water through cloth and seep into the room. That’s what makes the smell, you see. I walked through the scent looking for that one book that would contain the wisdom I sought.

A shelf set off alone caught my attention. There were only two things on the entire shelf- a large, leather-bound book and a glass bottle full of clear fluid. In a room of shelves filled to bursting this shelf so sparsely settled was an oddity. I picked up the bottle and turned it over in my hands. It seemed strangely heavy in my hands, but that only added to the mystery. I replaced the bottle and took down the book.

Brown, soft, supple leather served as a cover for the book. It felt smooth in my hands, but the book too was heavy, almost too heavy to hold. I had to put in down on a table before I could open it. It was full of dates and notations written in my father’s writing. The dates all seemed familiar to me, like something I wanted nothing to do with.

I looked closely at some of the notes beside the dates. I saw my name repeated time and again. It was the same on the next page and the next. I was the center of this book full of troubled days. Some of the dates I recognized. They were days so full of heartache and trouble I would never return to them no matter how much wealth I was offered. There were days that had been much like any other aside from perhaps being more difficult than most. I left the book on the table and went back to the bottle.

I pulled the stopper from the clear glass, dipped my finger in and touched my finger to my tongue. Salt. The liquid was as salty as an ocean, as saline, as tears. I put the bottle next to the book and found understanding.

My father had sent me in here for wisdom. He sent me to a bottle of my tears and a book of my troubles. And here, in the midst of my troubles, I found understanding.

On a small rise under a wide sky surrounded by trees is a stone. It is flat, gray and has words written deep on it. It was laid here by men long ago and was instructed to guard the sleeper below it. The stone holds itself ready at all times, watchful, waiting for anything that would disturb the sleep of its charge. The stone would give its life to fulfill the purpose given to it so long ago.

Over the stone stands a rose. The rose is purest white, the only flower on the whole sparse bush. It stands proud and erect daring the elements to challenge it. There are buds slowly coming to maturity, but they are not ready yet. The rose is alone and has such an important task. To guard the stone and what lay under it, to add grace and beauty to this small hill. The rose never forgets the hands that planted it there and always works to please them.

Standing over the rose is a tree, a tall, tall oak. The rose stands among his roots and has never noticed. The oak is old, brown and green,his roots strong and deep, his branches flung wide, his leaves bright. He stands, rough barked and ancient, ready to defend the helpless that sleep at his feet. He defends the rose, the stone and the sleeper from the harsh wind and the beating sun. He gives a place for birds to rest so that their songs can dance around the hill and help make it beautiful. The oak had already past youth when the sleeper was planted. The stone and then the rose followed soon after. The oak has never forgotten the hand, its skin old and wrinkled like his own, the hand that rested upon his bark and asked him to watch over the sleeper. The oak watches and guards. He hopes that his faithfulness will ease some of the weight off of that sweet hand that rested against him for a moment so long ago.

These three stand together on the small rise, under the sky, surrounded by trees. They faithfully guard the one who sleeps below. One day the sleeper will waken and they will not be needed to guard, but that day is not yet. So they stand, rock, flower, tree, waiting, waiting for that day.

Once upon a time there was a snowflake. She was white-blue, star shaped, fragile and sharp edged. She lived in a cloud with other snowflakes and dreamed of the day they would be released to dance. She practiced her dance, sure in her steps and her skill. She would move just so and the whole world would be moved at the beauty of her dance.

And then it was time. She jumped from the cloud with her fellow snowflakes and together they fell. She saw that it was nighttime and felt a pang of disappointment. How would any be moved by her dance if they couldn’t see her? How would they marvel at her beauty if there was no light to make her glitter? But then the wind caught her and she forgot all her worries in the splendor of the dance.

She twirled, whirled, spun and glided. Her sharp edges sparkled in the little light there was. She moved with ease, grace, dignity. Her fellow snowflakes stopped their dance just to watch her move. She was beautiful.

As she glided down to Earth she felt exhilaration like she’d never felt before. There, below her was the biggest audience ever to witness a performance like hers. She pictured their upturned faces, the wonder in their eyes. She could almost hear the thunderous applause that she was sure would follow her dance. She smiled in expectation.

As she glided, spun and drifted down she found herself in a street. But there were no people lining the street. There were no wondering faces and that meant there would be no thunderous applause. There was no one to see her dance. The snowflake faltered, stumbled. How could she dance with no one to see her? What good was her splendor with no one to witness it?

These thoughts made her heavy. Their weight pulled her down and the snowflake fell to Earth. She crashed against the ground and danced no more. Right before she melted away she wondered if it had been worth anything at all.

Inside a house a young child and a woman stood at the window watching the snow fall.

“Look, Mommy,” the child said with wonder in his young eyes, “Snow. Pretty, pretty snow.”