The Rhapsody of Beginning Energies

Woodland Trail / 2022 / Photo by Russell C. Smith

It all began somewhere else. In a town named No Name. A place next door to the middle of nowhere. Pretty damned far from anywhere on any map. No one plans to go there. The town pulls you in while you’re traveling on to the rest of your life. Clocks had stopped working long before you arrived. The train only stopped once a month, on no set schedule. Only thing you could depend on was the steady rain. Either dripping or deluging.  Rumor has it the rain was imported from somewhere upriver. Stay for any length of time, you’ll find out nighttime’s the place to be. That’s where the handily hypnotized, somnambulists, radical insomniacs, variable verbalizers, methodical mumblers – essentially the undone and the unsung spun their tales. Some gathered in the Main street’s dive bars, others wandered wonderingly into the woods.  Each location possessed their attraction. The main dive, The Central, was always jam-packed from before then to as late as it gets. You’ll go inside, breathe in the cedar scent of the wooden walls, and order a cup of this or a glass of that. It tasted like something else, something never tasted before in your whole life. One sip and expansiveness and loquaciousness spilled out of you. Out in the woods, it was another story. Fire pits, wood carvers, and ecstatic dancers. The whole biz was run by trans-dimensional Shamans, who might’ve had something to do with No Name’s beginnings. The Woodlands attracted outgoing maniacs and ingoing levitating meditators alike. Those who loved the rhapsody of beginning energies. The ones who practiced time expansion and unstuckness. It all began in No Name. No one knows when it might end.