Until Forever
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Posted:Nov 4, 2023 6:56 pm
Last Updated:Nov 6, 2023 4:59 pm 8026 Views
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You cannot forget love; it’s impossible.
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7
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Bringer of Magic
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Posted:Oct 21, 2023 7:46 am
Last Updated:Oct 25, 2023 2:49 am 9429 Views
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It is said that the eyes of black cats represent the doors that lead to the realm of spirits. They also have the ability to walk through both worlds, that of the living .. and that of the dead.
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2
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Midnight Magic
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Posted:Oct 17, 2023 7:41 pm
Last Updated:Oct 19, 2023 10:50 am 9234 Views
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I put a spell on you …
Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya
Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya
Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya
Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya
There used to be a greying tower alone on the sea
You became the light on the dark side of me
Love remained a drug that’s the high and not the pill
But did you know that when it snows
My eyes become large and
The light that you shine can’t be seen
Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey
Ooh, the more I get of you, the stranger it feels, yeah
And now that your rose is in bloom
A light hits the gloom on the grey
Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya
Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya
There is so much a man can tell you, so much he can say
You remain, my power, my pleasure, my pain
Baby, to me, you’re like a growing addiction that I can’t deny
Won’t you tell me, is that healthy, baby?
But did you know that when it snows
My eyes become large and
The light that you shine can’t be seen
Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey
Ooh, the more I get of you, the stranger it feels, yeah (yeah)
Now that your rose is in bloom
A light hits the gloom on the grey
I’ve been kissed by a rose on the grey
I’ve been kissed by a rose on the grey
And if I should fall, will it all go away?
I’ve been kissed by a rose on the grey
There is so much a man can tell you, so much he can say
You remain, my power, my pleasure, my pain
To me, you’re like a growing addiction that I can’t deny
Now won’t you tell me, is that healthy, baby?
But did you know that when it snows
My eyes become large and
The light that you shine can’t be seen
Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey
Ooh, the more I get of you, the stranger it feels, yeah
And now that your rose is in bloom
A light hits the gloom on the grey
Yes, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey
Ooh, teh more I get of you the stranger it feels yeah
Now that your rose is in bloom,
A light hits the gloom on the grey
Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya
Now that your rose is in bloom
A light hits the gloom on the grey
Kiss From A Rose
Seal
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3
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October Shadows
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Posted:Oct 17, 2023 6:35 pm
Last Updated:Oct 25, 2023 9:13 pm 12561 Views
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”Most people will tell you growing up means you stop believing in Halloween things - I’m telling you the reverse. You start to grow up when you understand that the stuff that scares you is part of the air you breathe.”
Urban legend or portal to another world? The Elevator Game purports to blur the lines of reality for players, if they follow the rules and don’t make a potentially fatal mistake. One disturbing case has caught the attention of believers - and skeptics.
The last known video of Elisa Lam alive showed her in an elevator in the Cecil Hotel. Days later, her body was found in the hotel’s water tank. To this day, nobody knows how she died or how her body got there.
The video is strange, to say the least. Unsettling if you watch it a few times. No one could make sense of what exactly happened to Elisa Lam until conspiracy theorists and paranormal fanatics zeroed in on one dubious explanation; an urban legend called the Elevator Game.
The Elevator Game - or “The Elevator to Another World” - is not for the faint of heart. Originating in Korea and Japan, it’s essentially a step-by-step ritual that is believed by some to blur the lines of reality. Although the exact dates of its origin are unknown, the game probably hasn’t been around for very long, and some posts regarding game outcomes date back only to 2011.
Not surprisingly, the popularity of the Elevator Game has been powerfully influenced by online accounts of it. And, as too often happens, it has become even more widely known as the alleged cause of a tragedy; the death of Elisa Lam. We’ll explore her case a little later, but first let’s take a look at the rules of the game.
There are many steps to playing (and surviving) the Elevator Game, and, as we’ve been warned, it’s imperative that you follow them precisely and in the exact order. In this game, you will need at least one “player” and an elevator in a building with a minimum of 10 floors. Here’s how to play.
Step 1: Let’s say you’re the player. You enter an elevator, alone or with another player. No outsider can enter the elevator with you, nor can you leave at any point. If you do exit the elevator, you must start over.
Step 2: Then, you ride the elevator from floor to floor in a specific sequence: up to the 4th floor, down to the 2nd floor, up to the 6th floor, back down to the 2nd floor, up to the 10th floor, and then down to the 5th floor. Remember not to get off at any of the floors.
Step 3: When you get to the 5th floor, if you encounter a mysterious woman, DO NOT look at her and do not answer or interact with her in any way. The consequences of engaging with her are said to include the possibility of never returning to the real world.
Step 4: Now, push the button to descend from the 5th floor to the 1st floor, Here’s where they say things could get crazy. If the elevator operates normally and takes you to the 1st floor, exit immediately and do not look back or talk to anyone. But if, instead of taking you from the 5th to the 1st floor, the elevator begins to go up … well, congratulations, you’re being allowed into another world. Or so they say. Alternatively, you might resist the urge to freak out, and instead simply press the emergency button and wait for the Fire Department to arrive with help.
So now you know how to punch your ticket to this portal to another world. Elevator Game believers say all sorts of things might happen at this point. Things might look different. It might be dark and spooky, and the power might be out, and no one else will be around. Some players have even claimed that they looked out the window and saw only a red cross in the distance. You might even lose consciousness, they say.
If you’re like me, though, probably the thing you’d want most in that situation is to know how to get home. Well, Elevator Game aficionados have an answer for how to return, too.
The way home has several steps, all of which players say you must follow exactly, lest you get stuck in that other world. Here they are:
Step 1: To get back to our world , the rules say you must get on the same elevator you rode before. Finding it might be a problem, but intrepid believers advise that you keep searching until you find it.
Step 2: Once you enter the elevator again, move from floor to floor in exactly the same sequence you did originally 4-2-6-2-10-5.
Step 3: Upon reaching the 5th floor, press the button to the 1st floor.
Step 4: If the elevator starts ascending again, quickly press the button for any other floor before you reach the 10th floor. Or, as I’ve suggested before, you can simply press the emergency button, have a seat, and wait for help to arrive. I hope you don’t suffer from claustrophobia.
So, now that we’re safe back home, maybe it’s time to consider the notorious case of a young woman who some believe was playing the game when she met her untimely end.
So, what are we to make of what happened to Elisa Lam? Here’s what we know.
Elisa was staying at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, but her parents became concerned when they didn’t hear from her on the day she was supposed to check out. They notified the authorities, and an investigation ensued. Police couldn’t find any trace of Elisa, except for an eerie video of her behaving erratically in the hotel’s elevator. In the video, Lam is seen stepping into and out of the elevator several times, seemingly talking to someone who wasn’t there, frantically pushing many of the elevator buttons, making gestures with her hands, and looking around in a paranoid fashion. Through all of this, the elevator stayed in place and its doors never closed. After Elisa’s body was discovered, naked and dead, in a water tank on the hotel’s roof, theories abounded. Was she experiencing some kind of psychotic episode? Was there someone nearby but not captured by the security camera? Was Elisa playing the Elevator Game?
Although Lam’s autopsy was inconclusive in determining her manner of death, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office found that she probably drowned by accident. The police went a little further and highlighted the fact that Elisa suffered from bipolar disorder, leading investigators to believe Elisa’s death was a classic case of a mental breakdown leading to a tragic end.
But of course, Elevator Game believers weren’t going to buy such a rational - if incomplete - explanation. Not surprisingly, Elevator Game believers were convinced that Elisa was playing the game. She must have broken the critical rule not to interact with the woman in Step 3, they said. Worse, she might have been transported to another world at that point - and been prevented from returning alive to her normal world.
As for hard evidence, the believers don’t have any more than the LAPD. So, what are we to think? Maybe someone will find something on her computer that shows Elisa was into the Elevator Game. Or maybe an investigator will figure out how her body got into the water tank. But for me, neither theory is completely satisfactory. In the meantime, when I need to get from the street to the upper floor of a building, I’ve got no problem taking the elevator - except maybe on Halloween.
Kellyn Doerr
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9
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In the End
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Posted:Sep 29, 2023 12:59 pm
Last Updated:Oct 3, 2023 7:18 pm 10350 Views
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”But nothing can save you. Not your friends, not the best Fred Astaire musical you’ve ever seen - the grace of it, not your mother’s beauty, not a line from a letter you find at the bottom of a drawer, not a magazine or the next day. Nothing can save you. And you stand in the moonlight and a sweetness comes off the top of the trees, and the fence around the yard seals you off from the dark and you can’t breathe. It is all so familiar and possible. It is too simple that there is this much good in the world and you don’t know how to have it. And it makes you wonder when it was you lost your place. Then you catch a breeze, so warm and ripe, it makes you hope that someone will come who also cannot save you, but who will think you are worth saving.”
~~ From Noah’s Wall- 1/31/04
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4
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Something Blue
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Posted:Sep 19, 2023 6:56 pm
Last Updated:Sep 22, 2023 7:26 pm 8985 Views
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Our story tonight is called Something Blue, and it brings us a little closer to a much anticipated event in the village of Nothing Much. It’s a story about autumn skies and turning leaves. It’s also about a kitten wrapped in a shawl, star anise and peppermint, and letting yourself love again after loss.
There was a sycamore tree on the far side of the rose garden at the Inn. She had once held a treehouse in her branches but that was many, many years ago. One late spring a wind storm had brought it tumbling down and it had never been rebuilt, but there remained enough of the ladder, smallish wood planks nailed into the trunk - that with a bit of care, one could climb up and settle into the crook of the first hearty branch. And for a cat, it was even easier. And so we sat, me and my dear Cinder. She was a small grey cat who walked on silent paws and watched me with yellow eyes. I leaned back against a branch and she climbed deftly into my lap. We turned our faces up to the sky. The leaves around us were just beginning to turn and would soon be the colour of Cinder’s eyes. Beyond their canopy we were watching for the weather to turn, for the day to brighten and the clouds to clear. Today was the day it seems the whole village had been waiting for. A wedding, here at the Inn .. and we were trying to deliver our gift to the happy couple. Cinder and I had known the bride for a few years, and if we did say so ourselves, had a hand (and a paw) in their love story.
It started when Cinder found a tiny orange kitten, lost and alone on a cold day. She’d brought her to our shop in downtown Nothing Much, dragged her through the cat flap by the scruff of her neck and set her in my lap as I sat in the big winged armchair by the window. I’d wrapped her in my shawl and gone to find a dish and some food. Once she’d eaten and fallen asleep in Cinder’s bed, we looked at each other and tried to decide what to do next. As I often do when I’m in need of a bit of guidance and inspiration, I took my Grandmother’s grimoire down from its place on the shelf and paged through it. I’d inherited this book (and my talents) from her and it often felt like she could still talk to me through the book. How many times had I come to it with a question and opened it straight to the page with the answer? That day I’d held the book in my hands and looked at the small cat curled up at my feet and wondered where she should be. Was someone missing her? Was she meant to stay with me and Cinder? I let the book fall open and my eyes landed on the words “lost and found,” a spell for location and placement. “Thank you Gran” I’d whispered as I read her directions. The spell involved a tricky kind of knot tied with yarn or string and as I sat down at my table I looked down to see Cinder dragging a skein of blue yarn out of my knitting basket. “Thanks to you too!” I said as I reached down for it. I cut a stretch of the fibre and as I tied it per Gran’s instructions, I thought about the orange kitten. I found a few of her hairs on my shirt and I tied them into the knot as well. Before I’d even finished it, I knew where she was meant to end up. This is often how spells worked for me. The mere act of focusing part of my mind on the process frees up another part to intuit what is needed and how to bring it about.
I had a friend who’d lost her beloved cat a few years before and part of the wound of grief his passing had left behind was still unhealed. The chamber of her heart that wanted to love was closed up. She was stuck and I think didn’t even know it. And here was this irresistible kitten, small and in need .. who I felt sure would win over my friend in an instant. Who would force her heart open and let the light into its closed up corners. So I tucked the little girl into my coat, buttoning it up around her and Cinder and I walked over to my friends house. The snow began to fall. I’d realized as I was tying that knot that if I knocked on her door and tried to convince her to take the kitten in, the spell might fall apart. No, it would cause her to make the decision with her head .. and we needed to deal directly with her heart. So we waited till it felt like the time was right and I set the little cat down at the edge of her front walk. She didn’t give me a backwards glance. I think she knew she was home. She just started leaving tiny paw prints in the fresh snow all around the front door then ducked under a shrub in the yard. From a distance I saw my friend come around the corner of her house. She spotted the prints and stopped short. Cinder jumped up onto my shoulder and purred as we watched her face shift, her eyes followed the prints. It had taken a little while. A cardboard box with a blanket and a dish of borrowed kibble from the neighbour - but eventually they’d found each other and that moment had marked a shift for my friend. Not all at once, but bit by bit she’d become more willing to ride the ups and downs of loving another. Next, she and the kitten she’d named Marmalade made room in their house for a little scruffy pup named Crumb. And here we were, after a few more turns in the road .. on her wedding day, marrying a man she’d come to love after his Bluebird had brought them closer.
From our spot in the tree, their love story fresh in my mind, I peeked up again at the sky. I knew they’d be needing something blue for the wedding and my gift to them was (fingers crossed) a blue sky, clear excellent weather for the wedding taking place soon out by the lake. The inn keeper had called me in fact when the date was first decided upon and asked my opinion. I remember standing by the stove in the shop with the phone in my hand, looking down into my simmer pot which was steaming scents of cinnamon, star anise and peppermint into the air - all good for waking up my second sight. I’d asked the inn keeper to repeat the date again, and as she did, let my attention travel through my body, not trying to do anything really, just listening for how it felt. “Blue skies my friend!” I’d said into the phone. But they’d been grey when we’d woken so we’d come to keep watch from this old sycamore. I laid my hand on the rough bark beside me and imagined the whole environment around us shifting. The chill in the air being driven out as the clouds rolled back. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes and breathed deeply thinking of my friend standing in her dress by the lake. The afternoon sun shining down around her and her sweetheart.
I smelled it before I saw it, like a hayride on a crisp day, the sun hitting the dry leaves ready to fall. When I opened my eyes, the skies were a bright September blue and down the drive of the Inn, a slow procession of guests were arriving. Cinder climbed up onto my shoulder and we descended down the old treehouse ladder. It was nearly time.
Kathryn Nicolai
Nothing Much Happens
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Summer’s End
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Posted:Sep 19, 2023 6:20 pm
Last Updated:Sep 20, 2023 3:25 am 8472 Views
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The tide recedes, but leaves behind bright seashells on the sand. The sun goes down, but gentle warmth still lingers on the land. The music stops, yet echoes on in sweet, soulful refrains. For every joy that passes, something beautiful remains.
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Waffle House
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Posted:Sep 10, 2023 8:55 pm
Last Updated:Sep 12, 2023 4:14 am 11421 Views
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”Life takes you down many paths, but my favourite ones lead to the beach.”
We never knew how to forfeit (hey now)
But we always knew how to talk shit (hey now)
Couple nights, threw gasoline on the fire (hey) (hey now)
We never knew how to perfect (hey now)
But we always knew it would work
‘Cause if something misread
Or if something got said
Know before the night ends
No, don’t get stressed, it’s gon’ get figured out
Oh, deep conversations at the Waffle House
Headstrong father and a determined mother
Oh, that’s why some nights we tried to kill each other
But you know it’s always love (hey now)
We never knew how to fake it (hey now)
But we always knew how to break shit (hey now)
Couple nights, threw gasoline on the fire
‘Cause if something misread
Or if something got said
Know before the night ends
No, don’t get stressed, it’s gon’ get figured out
Oh, deep conversations at the Waffle House
Headstrong father and a determined mother
Oh, that’s why some nights we tried to kill each other
But you know it’s always love
Na-na-na (oh, yeah)
La-la-la-la (but you know it’s only love)
Na-na-na (oh, baby)
La-la-la-la
But you know it’s always gon’ get figured out
Deep conversations at the Waffle House
Headstrong father and a determined mother
Oh, that’s why some nights we tried to kill each other
You know it’s only love
Na-na-na (oh, yeah)
La-la-la-la (you know it’s only love)
Na-na-na (hey)
La-la-la-la (you know it’s only love)
Na-na-na (it’s always love)
La-la-la-la
Waffle House
Jonas Brothers
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5
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Transitions
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Posted:Sep 3, 2023 4:08 pm
Last Updated:Sep 6, 2023 4:57 am 15859 Views
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”But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favourite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”
Salem’s Lot
Stephen King
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9
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Faded Blue
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Posted:Sep 3, 2023 3:56 pm
Last Updated:Sep 6, 2023 5:01 am 11220 Views
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Summer afternoon .. summer afternoon. To me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
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7
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