Someone back East is saying, "Why don't he write?"

There are two doors that leave the Coop. One is labeled simply, “The Way.” This simplicity belies the danger of heading out this portal. For “The Way” is sorta like sitting down in your hairstylist’s chair and saying, “I dunno, surprise me.” You may love it, you may not. Either way you’re darn sure gonna have to live with it for a while.

The Way is easy like a rollercoaster. You have little to do but hang on and yet when (and if!) you arrive back at your door you are often out of breath and more than a little shaken. In short, The Way does what it wants to, goes wherewithal it whims and in no wise, at any time, does it seek your permission. The Way is totally independent and in control of itself. The Way is scary. I need only put my hand to this door’s latch to hear the clickety-clack of its ascent to the first drop.

That’s assuming that I can reach the latch at all. The Coop is roughly eight by twelve with the doors at either end. And yet, the distance to “The Way” is always longest and strewn with a million distractions. Innocent at first, an old toy, a comfy chair and then, part way, there’s a shift. The distractions become bolder, more provocative. Dark and sticky, like an old spilled soda pop and boiled down to nothing but syrup. Get a little closer to the door however and they turn nasty. Scurrying little beasts with pincers hungry for flesh, low hanging, hooked and barbed vines, shifting shadows with toothless maws and fixed glares. There is a minefield of debris, a barrier of clutter that I strongly suspect I put there myself. Whether to keep something out or myself in however I no longer recall.

By comparison, the other door is rather ordinary. The latch seems to be always greased, the hinges, while a bit ominous in their creak, always swing wide. It is only after one commits the first foot over this threshold that one gets the first inkling of what lies beyond.

The first clue is the smell. The miasma of rot hits the cringing nostrils just a half second before the signal from the leading leg that the brain has just ordered the body into a gaping abyss. It is as they say, all downhill from there into…

The Great Dismal Slump.

This friends and cohorts is where yours truly has spent the last several months. Which is all the explanation one is likely to get for why this blog hasn’t been updated in two months. Lord willing, if there’s another such lull, it will be whilst I clear a path to “The Way.”