Photos & A Teaser

Standing by the Railroad Tracks . . .

And Looking Into the Sun!

Here are some new photos of me, contributed from a friend.

Also, it is Tuesday, which I hereby dub a "Teaser Tuesday":

Pulling his heavy denim jacket closer around his lithe body, Damian let out a puff of cold mist, and shivered from more than just the cold.

Being stuck in North America for two years had been the most unpleasant time of his life. He had spent these years living off mice half the time, sometimes fighting wolves for his claim to the tiny rodents. The other half of that time, he had spent starving.

Briefly, toward the end of this stint, some crazy cult of religious people who avoided technology like the devil had taken him in, until he left to find a more civilized settlement. The settlement he found was deserted. He fell asleep in a shack and woke up unable to open the snow-packed door or windows. This memory, more even than the cold, elicited his shiver.

~ Michael C. Sahd

Inspiration From Beyond

When I was a child, my father spent many hours at our kitchen table, writing a book. I watched him. He had boxes of notebooks piling up, and more than that, he filled every empty crevice in those boxes with napkins that he wrote notes on. It was quite a hectic mess, but he never stopped writing except to play solitaire occasionally.

He had the goal of becoming published, but never submitted any of it. I picked up on this passion. I wrote small things, mostly inspired by the fantasy games that I played.

Then, at the age of 19, I came home from work. We were living in the country near Tyler, Texas, which was a heavily wooded area where we owned around 20 acres. I went straight to bed that night, only saying goodnight to my step-mother. I wanted to say goodnight to my father as well, but he was already in bed.

Not more than an hour later, my step-mother came bursting into my room to tell me that my father had passed away. He suffered from congestive heart failure, and though this news was not unexpected, it was a very painful time. I’m having a hard time writing this, even now.

That same night, I found his journal sitting on the coffee table right in front of my father's chair. Curious to see his last entry, I flipped it to the last page. Scrawled on the first line and on a page of its own, there was the message...

“Please write more...”

I feel, more than anything, that my father knew his end was coming, and that his last message was for me.

Old Memories

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down to write something on this blog. I admit I'm terrible at keeping it up.

This morning, I complained as such to a coworker. He responded, "When I can't think of anything to write, I like to think up some old memories." He then proceeded to tell me a story from when he was a teenager, and after which, I shared my own story:

One cold November night my family was driving through Texas, somewhere in the flat expanses on the west side of the state.

I sat in the front seat next to my father, and my brother and sister were in the back seat. We had just left New Mexico and were on our way back home to Brownwood, Texas.

My father and I were "discussing" religion. Being a staunch Catholic, my father was of the belief that only humans have souls. I, on the other hand, had a taste for something different. The tiring dogma of organized religion left a nasty film in the back of my throat.

The argument centered around the belief of what had souls and what didn't. I argued that animals indeed had souls and he adamantly denied such a thing. At the time, I believed that in order to exist in a physical realm a spiritual counterpart must also exist, and I stubbornly insisted this was correct.

Off in the distance on this icy night, a bridge quickly loomed into sight, but we were too engrossed in our argument to notice the watch for ice sign.

"Actually," I said, obstinately, just like any know-it-all teen might, "Even rocks must have souls."

At this point, my father was furious. Such things were sacrilege, and could lead one straight to Hell. "Rocks..." he said angrily, punctuating each word, "Do... Not... Have... Souls!"

Immediately after "Souls!", our vehicle passed over the bridge and directly onto a patch of ice. The car started sliding sideways. My father over corrected, and we skidded sideways in the other direction. We fishtailed several times before finally crashing gently into the side rails of the bridge.

We were all wide eyed and breathing heavy. My father asked if everyone was alright, checking on each of us individually. When the shock of the crash faded away and my father backed up and continued down the road, I turned to him and said, "See? Sacrilege. You pissed off the spirits."

My father just ignored me after that, but the memory of that incident will stick with me for the rest of my life.