It is a long way from there to here, and it doesn't get any shorter with the traveling of it.
The rain is coming down and it seems to me of the sea, in nice and not so nice ways. I can smell the spray and the wind, even if I can't feel them. There is also rot and cold, an after the summer-people are gone scent. There is a level of relaxation, even cold and wet, to this outside of everything day. I turn inward and around to find out if I'm still where I left me.

A small person scuttles up to me, somehow seeming soggier than I am.Maybe it has to do with the amount of rain that a child wrapped in so many layers can absorb compared to an adult that at least as the sense and spare cash to have a jacket; open or closed dummy, I say to myself coaxing the old zipper shut over my chest.

"Hey, Corva" now come the eyes, I don't think I've meet this one before; word is out you lady! "Whatyah got for a hungry one"
I smile and shake my head, all the uneven hair and many braided feathers fall and drip in a more radical manner for my movement, and I drop to one knee on the sidewalk. Slinging my honorably discharged army backpack (the bag, not me) off my shoulders, I root around a moment or three while offering a smile and a couple edibles to my assailant.

"Um, sardines? Or tootsie rolls" I raise my eyebrows and hands, showing two bits of my horde, already knowing the answer.

"...both?"

"Yup, you know it. Who is saying thank you to this one with the backpack of foodstuffs?" I answer and question.

"Tad" comes the reply with a snatch and a polite nod; 'Tad' is gone.
I'm back to walking along with my boots heels to serenade me. I hum off key and wait for the next corner. It comes and asks 'left, right, straight, or turn around'. I look up and get rain in my eyes, and head straight on towards the River.

I've been in BTown a while now. I came in off the Wilds when I figured that I'd had enough of what they were giving me: space, open sky (if occasionally odd colored), my own time, and the flock at ease...that and the wind that kept knocking down my tent, the strange things that would come to call, and the general sense of never quite being where I thought I was (which was good and bad at different times).
I was out there for...dunno...the seasons, the phase of the moon, and the growth of the plants all play games with each other that has nothing to do with me or anybody else. It was a long time. My hair and nails grew and had to be cut. I cut my hair myself, and no, I'm not sure if that is a statement or an apology. Before that? I came from the World.

Do you know the scary emptiness that should be fun - of a carnival after its shut down? Just before the sun rises and makes you laugh at all the things you were thinking? That's it; only its that you still shake when you pause, 'cause you know all those Things you thought you saw, really were there.

That's kinda how my years growing up were. They happen, and one makes it through with whatever bits and pieces that can be held onto.
It is amazing how things can be ignored because there is no place in ones reality for them. Be it the hungry child on the street to the rich fat faced man and his skinny ('cause she works at it) wife, or the Land that children dream in to most adults, or the abuse that the kid next door takes because that sort of thing doesn't happen in nice families.

So the kid runs when they get the chance to a place, any place, which might be different. If they are luck, the place is different but so are they now.

One learns what one can to get by from all the sources that can be found. Too many cities - have you ever notice all the Main Streets and Broadways and Fourth Ave. Easts? - and too many roads. I've been flat on by back 'cause the frame pack was too heavy and the backlash from the semi's on the highway stronger than imagined; dear old Jack never mentioned that in his books. I've been sleeping on the roofs, and walking the streets, and checking out the dumpsters outside the bagel and pizza places and the bodegas, and spending all the time that could be spent in the libraries and the public gardens...it was in those haunts that I learned herb lore and through them that I found the Opened Door to that lead me to the place by the sea.

The "I", THAT WAS---

I'm fucked up again. I my mind can't remember last night but my body can, and it is humbly sorry about it. The bench I'm sprawled on is hard but dry, and the morning light is still new to the sky. I pry my unwilling head up off my sore right shoulder and blink, waiting for the day to come into focus. Still a little drunk I think, cringing about the hangover to come latter.

What woke me up so soon after I fell over, or maybe passed out? Not long wondering about that.

"Awrk" a far too piercing cry answers my question as if it understood. I crane my head up and sideways and squint at the tree that is awrking at me. "AWWWr?" again.

"'Morning there? Sure is down here." A black bird glides out of the leafless tree and hops onto the park bench. I'm surprised and delighted by its boldness. I find a smile to offer it in return for its charming behavior. It clucks at me in a pleasant manner. I've seen crows in this park often this bird is larger, much larger and his beak is a different shape altogether. I think about the photos I've seen in bird books and decide that he must be a raven, though what he is doing in here is baffling to me. What am I doing here for that matter?

I shake my head at the "what am I doing" again thought and the world swings dangerously and I am forced to empty my stomach on the grass.
The bird, the raven, looks disapprovingly at me.

"Yah, I know"; he has now lost interest in me, in favor of a paper bag at my left. "You can have it. This one is not in the mood for breakfast this morning"; I recall pretzels and some sandwich leavings inhabiting that bag. I am amazed that I carried it here through the whatever of last night. I gotta stop this.

I open the bag and set it down between us. I'm back in his good graces now. I can see myself reflected in his bright eyes as he breaks his fast.
My head is clearing fast but my stomach is still not interested in any useful activity. I've got a little book in my front pocket. I pull it out open it and fall in for a while.

"AorK!" demands the raven. I show him the book and get the same retort from him again a bit more miffed this time.

"What? Can't you read?" I ask but begin to read out loud to him..."A solitary, Crow on a bare branch--Autumn evening.
Its one of Basho's. He was this mendicant poet who lived in the sixteen hundreds. Wrong time by the sun, wrong bird, but I thought it might go well with you meal." More approving sounds from the raven. "So, some here often?" no answer but brown paper destruction. "missed your name..."

He looks up and shocks he almost right out of the World (nope that part comes latter) "Geoff", he qworks. I think I pass out again...

That was the start of Geoff and my friendship that continued to be built on with more meals (shared unlike that first one), mostly one-sided talks, fairly harmless pranks, long rambles, and readings. The other corvids around town about that time start thinking that I'm pretty okay too; so I end up with group of new friends. They have something on the old ones; they don't seem to want anything I'm not willing to give.

The season gets older and the days get shorter. I'm thinking about moving on again. I'm working some at a diner and I volunteer at the library just so they let me hang around long odd hours (so I can give something back to the books that give so much to me). I'm renting a tiny basement room and I've split from the crazy scene that was draggin' me down...mostly anyhow.

Things aren't really bad right now but the idea of another winter in this place closes tight cold claws in my chest. I battle my own head too much and there is too much history of me-s that I don't much like around here...

I fall to drinking again and wake up from a haze finding the official "pay or quit" sign on my door. I've been here before, standing in front of a door that has been mine, key not fitting...I kick the door and walk out, up the stairs, into the ass end of the day, keep walking, and walking, till my feet are hurting and I'm in a gray/brown/empty/park that I don't recognize. Geoff is with me and cooing in a worried manner. My face is wet and its not raining. I hate my own tears.

All sudden like a wind kicks up. It's filled with grit and city smells. My hand goes to cover my face and Geoff is clawing for a grip at my neck and shoulder. It hurts and I'm off balance and confused. There is a change to my mind - Coney Island maybe? I'm struggling to keep standing, dealing with the gale and Geoff who is either trying to hold on to me, or lift off with me, or just plain tear me up. There is another smell, bright and burning, and reality is folding in on itself and crushing me flat under its weight.

Sometime latter...

I stumble along the beach for a long time. I'm dazed and thirsty; I'm losing even my footprints to the sea. I'm dropping bits and pieces of me as I go, to try and stay upright, to have the strength to just keep walking on: one is Geoff, hat, jacket, gloves, one boot, two boots, a sock, neck chain, book, apple from my pocket, the pocket, whole jacket, it seems I've lost an eye somehow 'cause I can't see straight now. As I fall to the sand (glad it is still there to catch me), I think deliriously that I must have misplaced my feet now.

The Who That They Made Me

--angel's "corva, crowmama"--
"The storm tossed beach wore white lace, a trifle the waves time and again bestowed upon her. Perhaps she was ready for a wedding, what with her sky wearing a perfect suit of darkest purple clouds. The mood was still, not ready for celebrations or rites, so it must be surmised that the two were not to announce nuptials. Especially when the ocean obviously loved the sky more with her devotion to reflecting him day and night.
From his roiling magnificence came a smaller, black cloud, matching the sky in its currently moody behavior. It came swarming closer to the beach and as it did it became clear that it was made up of glossy black feathers, black eyes, pointed beaks, and mischief. Dancing in the air above the ground, the whirlwind of chaos began to know some degree of order as first one, then another, of the large birds began to make passes at the rocky shore. Like feathers on a string, they bounced and bobbed at the same spot on the shore, depositing bits of feathers, claws, and colorful wishes until they had formed an impressive pile.
The corbies moved off then and stared at the sky. In answer, the clouds broke aside and a fierce wind blew. The mound of wishes and feathers was scattered but came swirling together again in a miniature tornado.
Tighter and tighter became the funnel and when it could squeeze together no more, it stopped.
And there was the woman, Corva, made of wishes, feathers and claws, standing near the rocks, a glossy feathered mantle resting lightly on her shoulders."(Many thanks to the Angelfriend for her gift of this part of my story, I was kinda, er, out of it at the time you see)
There is a river delta down the beach a little farther along. I whirl
In place, yet I feel steady and strong, and (for the first time I can remember) I am not fighting back the panic that has lived at the back of my brain.
Perhaps the dear corvids left that out when they put me back together.
I smile at their wheeling forms above me and open my arms wide, to them and to the velveted clouds. The flock comes down and perches on and around me, and I'm laughing. My voice is hoarser and seems louder than I remember it.
More feathered friends editing?
Dunno, don't care, so happy with their gift to me. I yell with glee and the flock scatters to the air, yelling with me. We run/dance towards the delta.
It seems to be red with sunset colors by the time we reach it. I follow along its banks inland for three days; the color of the water only deepens as we travel.
We are lead to the NeverNever and make our home there.
I watch the City lights some nights and a few times a person (straying from one realm to another) stops to converse with me. After a time, we return to the world of the nonfeathered ones.
The City who's lights I have been watching is BTown

The Who That I Found Myself

I shift the weight of my pack on my shoulders to lessen the rope burn itch of my fresh ink. I've some new feathers on my left upper arm, now joining all the rest of the mulit-cultural corvid imagery that are painted shadows on my skin.
Someone told me, that along time ago the Tibetans figured that their prayer wheels sent up prayers with their spinning, and that the same effect would be has if those prayers were part of their body - every time they moved! I send up my prayers. I've been told, and believe, that tattoos are invites to the spirit world, keys to doors that already were. My flock knows my spirit and I know theirs.

I've come to a bridge by the River. (The Rats don't fuck with me. They've found that I'm not worth their efforts and that lotsa "little" corvine jokes tend to follow such pestering of the crowmama.) There are some stranger crows roosting under the bridge - I'll call 'em the Troll Flock. I bid them a good evening and fine nocturnal travels and they sleepily caw back there's to me.

I pick up and drop into the River small stones: one, two, three, and watch the ripples spread and overlap.
Things are fine, here, now.