story

I am standing in my kitchen while parsnip soup forms on the new tin gas stove light. my head is full of pain having been attacked five days previously by people unknown to me. I see the old dark wet oak trees just over the braking wooden fence swaying in preparation for new weather. the Victorian wooden weather barometer points to storm. my teeth and skull crunch. the bin needs changing. I think about the fact that even lions way out in the wilds of Africa get wounded too. my teeth on the right side of my head squeak as the sinew and muscle move. why is the winter so light this year? I wonder.
My name is James Rose and I live in a white nondescript house which was built I was told in the nineteen forties. Its located quietly on the outskirts of a small town which for some reason still has a castle. I am out of work most days these days so I walk through the woods situated close by.. the moon is beautiful as it lights the dark most nights when i walk. My ambitions have faded almost away now as I have no memory of what they were when I first set out into this world full of my ideas and my hopes. My dreams have remained but as you know or will come to realize, these dreams are not connected to youthful hopes and ambitious expectations. These dreams I speak of are dangerous and unforgiving. A relentless wilderness of fear and depression, of anxiety and outwith the grasp of reason for our most prominent cultural thinkers. The storm has arrived with the opening voice of large wind speed pools of rain. Rain drops formed of water perhaps having flowed in the Cairngorm mountains during the life cycle of its purpose. Maybe even before having been on the shining wet skin of an elder Black Marlin migrating through the gulf streams along the coasts of south America, having past and traveled through knowingly and successfully all fishermen's attempts at capture. yet here it has arrived to visit and wet the window from which I look out at the on coming storm. I must blend the soup and ready myself for my walk with the woods tonight.
I share this house with my wife Lawren. We both walk through the woods together and have done for so many years now. We met in the woods eighteen years ago. Lawren always wears red and has three daughters. Her daughters live in the highlands of Scotland in a ring of small crofts. They are crofters and use their knowledge and natural ways to survive. We visit and stay fairly often.