Still Waters Run Deep; Babbling Brooks Don't Mind Their Keep.

What is the most fearsome thing? Is it the deep, dark stillness you cannot see through or get to the bottom of? Or is it the never ending turmoil you can't stop, limit or change the course of?

(Don't let your dingle-dangle dangle in the dirt, but always let your preposition dangle when flow matters more than "correct" grammar. And it always does...)

Leeches and other dark, slimy things abide in still water, deep or not. My Dad, the Prophet of Welchville, warned me about this very thing many times. I paid attention but thought perhaps it wasn't always true. Nothing's always true, every single time. Right? (He also told me not to play on the sprucewood car rack that was temporarily on the ground because I would get a splinter. I paid no heed, that is, until I drove a very robust three inch splinter into my five inch little girl hand from tip of middle finger to middle of palm.)

As a young child, sitting on a rock at Wild River, I once dangled my feet in the warm, still water that was so soothing after paddling in the unforgiving frigid, whitewater outflow from the White Mountains. After a few minutes, I found to my horror a shiny black leech overtaking my little toe, otherwise known in our family as "Achy Pea." (The line up from smallest to biggest is: "Achy Pea, Penny Rue, Rudy Whistle, Mary Tostle, and Old Man Bumble." Oh, ayuh.)

I ran screaming to my mother, who after eight other kids was non-plussed. She plucked it off, did little to assuage my heebie-jeebies and offered me into the care of one of my older sisters. Wild River was more than an hour's drive from home and my savaged little toe bled the entire way. It was a real life lesson for me at age five to avoid still water at all costs from that day forward.

Forty years later, I continue to avoid still water for the leeches I know live there, both real and imagined. People who seem mysterious or who are not at once likeable in any small way are also avoided because I know there's a leech in there somewhere. I would summarize my feelings as "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Or, as our ex-president, George W. Bush so eloquently said,

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.".

Right now, I'm just howling with laughter because I pulled this quote off YouTube and watched the video of him saying this. Oh my GOD!!! I need to take a pee break!!!! Phew, I think I'm done laughing for now. Whooo doggie! Will Rogers said "The problem with practical jokes is that very often they get elected." Poor Georgie boy, the bumbling, bubbling brook, always off course, while his pal, Cheney, the indiscriminate shotgun-toting leech, slithered around in silent deep cover making a lot of terrible stuff happen. Both very dangerous men for very different reasons in my naive opinion.

So for me, the babbling brooks of this world that ferret and swirl don't give me a moment's worry. I accept that change is the only constant, as my resume will reveal. Only now, this lack-of-career move makes sense. I kept trying to resign my Self to some mainstream thing, a normal career with a normal paycheck, benefits, vacation time, insurance coverage and it never worked for me. Now I know why.

I finally did the right thing, launching headlong into the eddy, in my pajamas and diamonds. (I really need to sit down and write some lyrics for that song, "Pajamas & Diamonds." )

"All you need to do is hold on tight...and believe." Stephen King.