March 26, 2010 by Linda Bergeron.

Fiction By Linda Bergeron
For whatever reason, they were wayfarers in winter, a group of people headed somewhere, landing for the cold evening, at dusk, in a town of hopeless barrenness – really a short row of house-huts along a wide dirt road, facing a boundless steppe, but backed by a thin break of forest.

For whatever reason, a large quiet man and a woman fell to sleeping in a hut together. She took the bed, deep with quilts and blankets, and he took a place by the small hearth.

She awoke in the night, hours before dawn, to see him huddled at the stone cold hearth with no fire. She knew right away that she could not have the warm bed only; he was suffering from the cold, crouched and shivering.

“Come,” she said with sudden authority. “Come into the bed.” He roused and did as she told. He crawled over the foot end and found his way in.

“The wood was wet and would not burn.”

She quickly swung the covers away from her curled back, saying “Lay against me. You must get warm.”

So he did. She felt his massive body slowly relax then soon fall into a slumber of even breaths. It was unwieldy for one to be so close without an arm across the other’s body, her body that he leaned into.

“It’s alright. I am covered. Throw your arm across. It’s alright.”

She fell asleep in the rhythm of his breath, with his arm innocently across her hip.

She would half-awaken, feeling his breath, his warmth, remembering that he was there. And fall to sleep again.

When she was aware he was laying there, awaking as she was awaking, his fingers felt her skin. She smiled to herself: his hand had found the only inch of break in the cloth on her body, and unconsciously did little affectionate touches like a sleeping child would caress its mother.

When she was fully awake, eyes closed, laying in the warmth of this bed, their two bodies close, she realized her toes were playing footsie with each other, something she noticed that she did in her years of lonesomeness.

Her touched her, and why would she shirk? It felt good. He thanked her for inviting him to the bed. “I had to,” she said.

He said soft words, and began a little exploring of her body. She responded in little moans. He found her breast and played with the touch of it. She was turning toward him, eyes closed, accepting his lips on her mouth, feeling her own strong response, taking in the smell of him, the ease of his actions, his no rush reaches, even the moments of stillness, deep in morning warmth together.

After she had thrown back the bedcovers, exposing herself, after she had reached for his haired erection after his invitation, they were very very close. He was patient, they kissed, they were a man and woman fully together.

For some reason, they did not talk much at first. He suggested, knowing they would be leaving the hut and joining the others and continuing the journey, “We should say we are married.”

This worried her, and he saw her thinking hard. “I…I am not divorced from my husband. He has been gone eight years. I do not know if he is alive or dead.”

“What do you feel?”

“I think he’s alive,” she offered. “I am strong. He does not bother me.”

They were quiet together.

“We do not know each other,” she said.

“We know plenty. You were very good to offer me the bed when it was so cold.”

“You were so cold. I had to.”

“No, you did not have to. You did. You are a good person.”

“Will you protect me?” she asked. It was strange to ask. It was not what she meant.

“Are you in danger?” she queried. “Are there things I should know about you?”

She remembered that he spoke evenly with the other men, that he always had good suggestions. He was a man that was as a nation to himself.

“No, I don’t harbor enemies. I would not endanger you. But,” and he thought here carefully, imagining what he might do in unexpected circumstances, “if something came up and it would not be safe for you to know me, I would deny our relationship…so you could not be hurt….”

He felt her stiffen a little.

“…by a nod or a glance, something to tell you, but no one else, to warn you.”

She was thoughtful. They were perfectly at ease with one another. This was rough territory. There were desperate people around, men who would sell anything to their own advantage; people who were aimless, or broken. It would be good to feel his protection, to be allied with one such as him. She had no trouble imagining them traveling a long time together.

“Maybe,” she offered, and it was a thought that came suddenly to her, “maybe you could give something away, like carry a coin in your pocket and if a time should come, offer it to the person of doubt, put it on the table, be sure that I can see.”

He nodded, still close to her body, unworried.

“People grow old together and then one of them dies,” she revealed her fear.

“People are ready by then. So, they enjoy each other while they can.”

“Do you drink?” she asked.

“Sure, I drink.”

“One? Or two?”

“Sure, sometimes two or more. I enjoy drinking now and then.”

“I can’t tolerate drunkenness at all.”

“That’s okay,” he said.

“You know,” he said to her, looking her strong in the face, “we are married. God married us. You did the right thing. We have been perfectly comfortable with one another, no fears, no pretense.”

She knew he was right. ~ L.W. Bergeron

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February 22, 2010 by Linda Bergeron.

By Linda Bergeron
Walking errands: going down the street “looking for a feather,” and corrected my thinking to “being where I might find a feather.” To the library to make copies before mailing the envelope to the friend: the magazine pages were a hard size to get a left and a right onto a single copy (silent grumbling). Thought instead: to make copies at the newspaper office. A stop at the ATM machine but it did not work: snowmobilers were in town all weekend and here it was a full hour before the bank would open (sigh). Backtracked to the library and slowly, deliberately printed out single pages, sealed the envelope, borrowed enough petty cash to cover the mailing of packages.

Walked to the post office and shipped the four packages I had. Walked to the phone company to drop off sprouts for employee Tom. Paused in the parking lot to greet former landlord Bill who, at 84-plus keeps going smiling, walking, doing, and I related my south-end-of-town-house temperature yesterday morning of 14 deg. F, but that this morning it was 10; he said his house across the street from here had 13. We smiled. I offered, “But… it’s going to be a sunny afternoon,” and he agreed as we parted.

I walked homeward down S. Pine past Velda’s house, thought-of-a-feather-and-saw-a-feather (interior smile). Saw two black birds flying happy together above me (thought of the spirited friend), then a third, trailing. Found: a couple more feathers outside Fran’s house, then another, larger, less fragile.

Turned the corner onto Dawson, spotting a hawk in the distant bare willow trees in the southern creek pasture. Watched him, felt his body watching back, with my full awareness of the intense sun shining upon me from the peripheral left, sensing his message that the times are still critical; I remembering the aboriginal’s retelling last night on the phone of how a scout would place his own vision behind the hawk’s eyes to see what he, a man, could not.

Walked home: a lovely, cautious, take-nothing-for-granted early spring morning. Inside the front door, emptying my pocket I found the bank card that did not work was another, similar-blue card (interior smile). I swept the entry floor, which I had been meaning to do for days.

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December 10, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

I saw him twice, bringing donations of books his children had outgrown; the children who were here in the summer but returned to live with their mother in California; his smile, his concern about the book he could not find that was overdue and how much it related to his life overseas.

After his death I was in a quandary for a few weeks, knowing it was inappropriate to send out the library system notice after his sudden death. I sought the advice of a warm-hearted clerk at the main library after realizing the family could be going through his things and that the library was hoping to get back that brand-new book – so that correspondence was probably timely. She suggested a well-worded gentle letter explaining the situation.

The obituary did not have local addresses for his relatives although the surname has many people here whom I don’t know that well. I wrote a note to the funeral home director, who called me, aghast. “I’ll pay for the book myself! The family is absolutely devastated.”

I felt horrible; she was right. I said the branch library could simply cover it. We ended the conversation with her saying she’d seek permission to get into the house. In a few days I found the book in the book drop. I checked it in, relieved, paid the fines, and took it home to read what he had read.

I was halfway into it, having marveled at the writer’s talents which were those of a remarkable person who had amazing life experiences and discovered rather well into maturity that writing was a venue for him. The stories were wondrous and disturbing. I was soon done. This was, I knew, not a book to simply put on the shelf between the alphabet of other author names. It needed cleansing, and release, and so, at home, I ‘smudged’ the pages with great intent and compassion for this soul who held it at a poignant time.
Judging from his presence with me and the little I knew of the situation I came to believe that with the children gone, he was bereft and floundering. The story in the newspapers was that he had been drinking with a visiting friend in the evening at home, after a day of shooting, and accidentally shot himself.

I can believe all of these possibilities ~ that the book was not lost, but that he may have decided to keep it as meaningful and at hand, and to pay for it [Have I not done this once myself?]; that the accidental shot was truly an accident, or, perhaps it was no accident at all ~ perhaps even the friend could not tell; and that it does not matter to any of us here on earth what happened because it was a fateful moment between him and his Creator; and all who are left behind – whether of flesh, entanglement, embrace or simple acquaintance – are minus his presence and simply given a mystery to come to personal terms with. LWB

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December 10, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

Taking the flame to the crisp
Dry-green sweetgrass’ end curl;

Keeping the blow of my breath
Captive in my mouth while the feather instead
Takes the task: to fan the barely alive ember
into a purging spirit;

Holding the book of stunning stories aloft,
so every page is arrested in the new air
of sacred smoke;

Preparing for this next change ~
The sudden, unexpected one
That will fit the puzzle someday,
That will come to be understood
As, even pained, perfect.

Linda Bergeron writes from Halfway, Oregon.

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November 15, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

“Standing at the River, from the Road”

 By Linda Bergeron

Standing at the river, from the road ~

It’s in-con-se-quen-tial if your eyes are closed,

And you’ve opened your senses to the world.

Watching from a place that is afar ~

When you know a river, you can see it anywhere,

Even when the fog is thick you see it still.

            The rocks are always at your feet,

            The skirmish on the bank is small;

            In the great adventure of grav-i-ty

            The long shared feast is best of all.

Being-in-the-world’s the place to be ~

Quieting the self to hear the message in the wind,

When you’re standing at the river,

                                    At the river, from the road.

[under the influence of a bluegrass music festival, and the early morning hour in Denali at Kantishna, “the meeting of the rivers”]

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November 15, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

I came to understand that, looking at societies and even people in general, there are basically those who are earth-based and those who are not. In simple terms, there are those who appreciate the gifts of survival and living that come directly from the earth and respect them enough to protect them, and to teach their children about them.

And there are those, ‘civilized’ to such a degree, that they live out their days not in the context of the earth, but of buildings, social institutions and packaged realities.

After this insight, I was reading a Jack Weatherford [professor of anthropology] book, which carried the reader from the formation of continents, through the various ages of man and the important division of foragers and farmers. I was struck with the simplicity of this concept of the diversion in the path of men, and where it led.

And then the phone rang and I was talking with a friend of like ponderings. After we parted, I returned to the keyboard, intent on not dropping the thread of thoughts I had earlier. Since I was reading another book on and off, I noted its influence. Oh yes, a little background: I have been re-educating myself on the aboriginal experience on the so-called North American continent since late 2006, taking the time to review what current school textbooks on American history look like these for middle- and high-school students, and digging incessantly deeper into source documents and eye witness accounts while visiting regional sites [northeastern corner of OR counties; western Central Idaho – all Nez Perce homeland].

“Thoughts brought up by reading (mostly) from Weatherford’s Savages & Civilization, with topical checks into Johnson’s History of the Jews:                      

HISTORY [which enlightens the topic of Christianity]                                     

• School history: does not describe – favorably or extensively - about non-Christian science, art, unbiased politics or literature, etc.
• Suspicion: farmers thought they had to work harder than foragers [Old Testament taught they should toil and suffer] – while foragers played and enjoyed life more; farmers had more stress, required more specialty…..Qs – Did they become angry? Were they coerced to be/remain farmers? If so, by who? What?
• Farmers/Domesticators
  • don’t allow for nomads
  • ‘squeeze out’ nomads and foragers
  • cut up geography with ‘owners’ and ‘conquerors’
• word: colonize (v.) from Fr. colonie; Latin, colonia, colonus meaning husbandsman, from colere, to cultivate…………….[sadly interesting]
• you-are-your-language (p. 132)….modern: other countries want to learn English,  may be a very good language since naturally derived from all other languages….
• An earlier insight: people are earth-based or not-earth based
  • earth-based : loves and appreciates and works with
  • non-earth-based: struggles, holds grudge (afraid to be angry at God when they should be angry at their religion – not the same)

EDUCATION in America

• If teachers are asked, “Why don’t US students’ world history classes include as much about Canada, Africa & S.America (and other nations) as it does western civilization? Some likely answers: “So much history to cover, they’ll get more if they go to college;” ….and all those who do not go on to college, but still vote and raise children?
• What is not said – western civilization history is ruthless, disturbing, in conflict with religion – so ‘we can’t teach the truth’
• Not unrelated: I remember as a high school student who was very familiar with the library shelf, that those Dewey system areas for Medicine and Law in the late 1960s were always empty; I wondered, why?  It didn’t take me long to consider that Doctors and Lawyers had hold of and a monopoly on  the information
• What Oregon education [the only one I’ve studied] provides is a diluted, incomplete and misleading history education; as a library worker who watches the incoming catalogues and constant advertising, a new suspicion: mainstream textbook publishers are as controlling and narrow as the rest of the media  
• “Still worried about Infidels” – mainstream educators and historians continue to present history from the deeply ingrained western viewpoint – even the secular ones don’t realize it; and I am reminded of Professor Jim Craven’s concept - the cloning of ideology.

Excuse me while I get back to burning leaves.

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October 15, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

Five ways of looking at…….Harvest

I.Stepping into the morning yard with hot mug,first outdoor breaths,I spot the fallen plumsnestled in the rascal grass.I stretch my shirt into an apronthat will hold each oneas I take them to the kitchen,close to my chest, full of aroma,little fleshy bounties at last, since the long ago days of spring.

II.When the heat and spirit-warmth of Sunchange how it arcs the day,and knowing that diminishing is the next journey-way,one hungers alreadythe absence that will comeand runs out of doorsto greet the more precious September sunin a desperation July did not know.

III.Last flower of its kind, from the bush that a moon ago was full-headwith blossoms.I pluck it with my nail, todaya valuable harvest of pink and yellowto set in a tiny vase - remembrance and presence in a single one.

IV.Tucking in the still-green tomatoes in the coming on of twilight,under a sheet, draping off the edges where the cold could come in;

covering the solitary late-flowering morning glory ~all grown up and ready to bloom, so late in August, then willing to adjust from the random weed-and-rock bed to a pot of soil I gave it, a sturdy rod to lean on.She adjusted and continued to present her daily purple show;and lastly, the petite pepper who tried so hard to bear some fruit, andcarries now ~ a large and a small ~ misshapen bells,glossy greens that hang awaiting weather’s final tale.Covered, tucked, little attentions ~surely a way to say a fortnightof evening goodbyes and I-love-you’s, to the season’s garden.

V.What abundance!the evening bird voice, no longer the cacophony of many in unison,but now a single abbreviation of one telling the listening a single secret;

the bowl of fruit and the ease with which my hand travels over thelushness to select and bite into, another

the dried slices, plump and plentifulin an aromatic cupboardawaiting the hunger that winter’s coldwill bring;

how like the other side of the fecundityof spring is this:richness, plenty, fruition,blossoms and bees and breezesthrough long hot days,evening stars, meteors,Pleiades sparkling in the nighttime black,and chilled rosy sunriseslaunching toward autumn.

Poetry by Linda Bergeron

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October 15, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

Awake. Last night’s full moon

still present, in predawn’s dark.

Out I aim, to the balls of lit clouds

that fill the great sky above this valley town’s stillness,

single stars scattered in the sky beyond.

My feet bridge me to earth,

my torso pivots slow moves,

my face is given to seeing everything,

to surrender to the endless vault of it all ~

my aloneness finally altered and dissolved

by the saying-goodbye coyote clan yips,

as She, in her brilliance, descends beyond the shadowed west ridge.

The small house behind my footsteps is hardly there.

Poetry by Linda Bergeron

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October 11, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

Untitled Poem by Linda Bergeron

Bahama cruise:

no news,

sun, sea,

take-care-of-me,

horizon blue,

endless view,

cloud-watch sky,

unseen tide,

arising moon,

autumn soon,

present care,

home out there,

friend and kin,

without, within.

Return to shore?

Aground once more.

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May 11, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

by Linda Bergeron

Here’s an if-then question, folks. If the catch phrase blog comes from the miniaturization of the phrase Web Log, then let us imagine that the original phrase coined had been, instead, any of the following: Web Journal, Web Annal, Web Record, or Web Chronicle.

If you use your brain while twisting your lips around a bit you can see immediately that trying to let something like bbb-chronicle drop out of your mouth simply does not work, so that one could be elim-inated, no question.

Now bannal (which my MicrosoftWord program insists I am not spelling correctly), if pronounced in the same way that one would say annal with that assertive ah start to it, just doesn’t quite draw up an image of fast words sent off on a keyboard, and would not have worked well either.

The truth is that saying the phrase blog forces one’s mouth to drop open – for an extended moment even – in order to say it out loud, suggesting similar phrasings, sounds and meanings such as the blahs, bloppy, and various non-word, unofficial sounds that generally communicate boredom or a ho-hum, super-casual attitude and…[Excuse me, my spelling error just brought up attidude which completely distracted my train of thought.]…well, one can probably think of some other possibilities. Mouthing blog truly does suggest an element of mild surprise or maybe feeling aghast. (Are we in fact amazed at our-selves for writing a Dear Diary without a lock and key?)

Brecord is a stretch. As a weird combination of a puff of breath - said with a determined accent as in brec’ord – it can be suggestive of haughtiness inherent in the Queen’s multi-shire version of English. Brecord. Not once does it make one think of writing up one’s thoughts or hard-earned opinions, and posting them in a public, unlegislated place for absolutely anyone on the planet to view while in their slippers at home, sitting straight at work, or tilting the monitor away from the next cubby at the library.

Now the offspring of ‘Web Journal’ – and I’m suggesting bjrnl, here – has a whole lot going for it. With European tennis players and unconventional female singers adding to the world cultural fund, most of the word-pronouncers of the literate English-speaking world no longer have any problem wrapping their flexible lips around anything beginning with ‘bj—.’ It’s slightly tricky getting the hard b and the leggy y to be friends but most of us can do it with minor practice, so this suggested short phrase of bjrnl (which is a second-degree short form of bjournal of course) might really have worked.

Blog is it, though. Some will not want to spend even a synapse’s handshake between brain hemis-pheres over this kind of what-if playfulness, let alone a half-hour of their Sunday afternoon (as I just have). But, sometimes one can’t help the ideas that surface and demand a little attention, which simply will not stay still until one does something with them.

As for me, I don’t have time or exhibitionism enough to blog. What do you think memoirs are for?

Linda Bergeron writes poetry, autobiographical essays and has been a freelance correspondent for the HELLS CANYON JOURNAL for ten years.

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