A bunch of words got into a brutal knock down drag out fist fight with each other one evening. I mean they were really going at it like it was the last world war, and a peaceful ceasefire was nowhere near in sight. The message hiding behind the words became so fed up with them that it just got up and galloped away on a horse called lightning into the wilderness, leaving the words to sort out their own internally verbal domesticated violence.
I decided to meander a few country miles out to a creative retreat down at the dark end of the street, which I knew had been shut down for the season before I even thought about heading out there. I guess I just felt like checking out the sign that was left on the front door
I of course already knew exactly what the sign said, but needed to read it out loud again, mainly because I had no other reason to justify galloping through the forest so late at night. To be honest, I just felt like an evening stroll was in order to clear my clouded mind, so I used the sign as an excuse to creatively saunter my way through the eccentric moonlit stillness of a silent wilderness.
It was a pleasant evening, the moonlight tasted as delicious as ever upon the tip of my tongue, while my steps snapped, cracked, and popped upon the cast-iron snow, which sounded like something similar to a crackling fire, vaguely reminiscent of some crescendo from a classical piece of music that an exhausted phoenix might fall fast asleep to.
The sign was crookedly situated upon the door and the message had not changed since the last time I read it. All it said was, we thank you kindly for your unwavering support, your ever loyal patronage, and your unbridled universal love and lifelong companionship.
It was from the old mindset. It also said that the retreat would be closed until further notice, or at least until the glacial ache, embitterment, and existential dread had fully thawed out from upon the High Sierra mountaintops, which was when the new mindset was to take over the operational side of things, and that it looked forward to seeing everyone again as soon as possible.
I wondered how many and what kind of drastic changes, if any, the retreat would make under such new ownership. I thought about the new mindset and how much creative and healthy capacity it would have to have in order to oversee the daily routine of such a boutique creative operation, which included a once well received, yet now shadow banned, and not very discreet page of archived textually flirtatious and frisky romantic poetry on a social platform known as the IG, as well as a few outdated blogs with questionable sentence structure and way too many philosophical mixed messages, a couple of busted up semi retired typewriters, a third generation Canon E5 camera, as well as an infinite amount of somewhat stunning photos, half written poems and long winded short stories to thumb their way through before opening its doors to the public again.
The retreat was hardly a blip on the internet's radar upon the bourgeoise map of mentally touristy locales: yes Nowhere, Nevada, so far from the urban and artistic hustle and bustle of New York City, Toronto, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Alabama, Mississippi, and even Idaho, yet merely a stone's throw from the wild west majesty known as good ole Lake Tahoe.
Being an upstanding lifelong employee as the chef of the retreat, I would soon hear all about the new directions, if any, in a few days, coming weeks, or possibly even months that the new mindset was looking take the retreat in.
Who really knew how long it would take for everything to thaw out?
The only thing really known at the moment, was that the new mindset was pretty set in its ways of no longer feeling the need to creatively force things. But as it stood so far, nothing had changed with the retreat, it was still an absolute haunted, unorganized, abandoned mess, and from the looks of things on the inside as I peeked my mind through one of the clouded windows, no one had been inside the place in many, many moons.
The promising news of the soon to be renovated retreat is still a mystery to me, one that will definitely keep me on my toes in the coming days and weeks. But hell, at least there was finally something worth creatively chewing on during this rather mild Sierra Nevadan winter.
All of the sudden the words from earlier brought the brutal fight to a thicket of blackberry bushes across the river from where I stood, and the message showed up right behind them again, galloping full steam towards me. I had no choice but to step out of the way at the last minute and let it fly right past me without getting trampled under foot by it.
After which, I looked in every direction around the moonlit wilderness, zipped up my heart and soul, and started traipsing my happy ass back home to get some much needed sleep, all the while admiring the soothing sound of the crescendo of a classically crackling fire with every blessed creative step I took.
Til the next time.
Ryan Love
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