Poor Thomas’ Almanac for January 24: In 1848, James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento, California, promising wealth for the masses. The state’s been trying to live up to the hype ever since.

“No! Please don’t!”

The brightness of the moon, as it beams through my bare window, is counter to my nocturnal desire to hunt and that is why we are here. The clock on my bedside, screams 1:23 in frighteningly red digital figures.

“Right on time, dear,” I whisper with pleasure. I suck in a long, deep breath from her panties, which I hold in my hand and that are so much more fantasy-provoking than a driver’s license or an earring as they still smell of her sweet pussy juices and ammonia-ridden pee.

Trapped in the corner, against the wall; she has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. She is my winning prize as I cut her gown from her body, throw her to the shag-carpeted floor and wrestle her panties from her waist and legs.

Her pleading does not fail to thicken my cock as I quickly I kick away my blankets, driving them to the floor with my feet. I’ve held off as long as I can, finally I allow my hand to begin the easy, long strokes I enjoy.

The urgency in her screams send a shiver across my skin, raising the tiny hairs all along my naked body. I lock my eyes on her youthful face, her struggle for freedom, making her ample breasts jiggle under me as I press my swollen shaft into her warm, moist and tight, little cunt.

Such squirming is intoxicating and my hard-on nearly explodes as I softly kneed it’s mushroomed head between my fingers. I know I must hold back, or I’ll finish too quickly and will have to begin again.

Meanwhile, she starts digging her french-manicured nails into the fingers wrapped around her compressed airway – and we both know death is close-by. My experience reminds me that there are only a seconds left for me to finish before her struggle ends – the thought excites me even further.

Suddenly, my muscles clench, my body pulses, a scream rises from my throat and then I am lying in my damp, cum smeared sheets. We’ve gone limp simultaneously, me attempting to slow my uneven breathing, her on the floor at her murderer’s feet.

I roll over and gaze longingly at the newspaper clipping with her picture in black and white, and smile knowingly before falling into a peaceful sleep.

She’ll save the world twice more this month from the violence that continually builds in me and yet I know she’ll never be enough. None of them are ever enough and I can hardly wait for the coming new moon.

With age has come aches and pains. It’s easy to look back at one’s childhood and remember when it wasn’t so hard to bend down or climb up on something, not to mention jump off of stuff.

The thought of that activity causes me to cringe because of the pain it would bring. As a child, I spent most of my time outside, barefoot, playing, running through the fields, the woods and creek.

Back then, I was in touch daily with the Earth, but as I’ve grown older the more distant I’ve become. Time to feel our youth once again.

The loss of a parent or parents is a difficulty at any age. The trauma lasts much longer than expected, and reappears at odd moments of any given day — sometimes decades later.

I wish my folks were still around so I could ask questions — something about themselves, to find out if they experienced a certain something I’ve experienced at a certain age, or even how they’re doing.

But most of all I’d simply like to spend more time with them. If you’re a parent, a child or both make time to spend time with your loved ones before they’re gone.

It seems that every modern, well-known author has a book adapted for film or video. To my way of thinking, these adaptations rob people of the ability to make pictures in their head.

No one needs use their God-given imagination anymore, instead the medium implants images from one person’s perspective into the minds of all those who watch, but who do not read. It’s all effortless; ready made references from a single source.

What would television be without moving pictures? Radio. What would radio be without sound? A book.

It’s time to start watching radio and turning up the books.

Poor Thomas’ Almanac for January 21:  In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S. But unlike today, she didn’t dress up as a vagina and march about to celebrate her accomplishment.

High school graduation, I lost my university scholarship and I needed to figure out what to do with my wide-open future. Thus, I applied for an internship in Chicago to work with a nationally-known broadcaster.

I did well in the first two interviews.

The final interview was in San Francisco. It was more of a ‘getting to know each other’ chat, making it clear I had the position.

Suddenly, I felt panicked. Then I heard myself saying, “I don’t want to work for free.”

There was a strangely long silence before I got up and walked out. Not very noble.

As little old men went, Johnny had seen nearly everything – except for what he’d beheld only moments before. He had to shake his head and blink twice after seeing Mary Poppins, the newest Governess, draw a lengthy coat rack from her carpet-bag. 

“Odd,” he muttered as he leaned over to have a peek inside the thing. Nothing but ordinary to the eye, so he took his investigation a step further reaching into it with both hands.

Without warning the children’s new puppy-dog dashed into the room, slamming into Johnny. The force caused the old man to lose his balance and he tottered over head-first into the satchel.

Before he knew it, Johnny was dropping through a dark void. He yelled, “Help me,” but the emptiness swallowed up his sound.

Forever and ever Johnny dropped through the blackness of nothing. To him, it was as if all time and space had coagulated in one spot and had sucked him into a certain death.

However, bit by bit, heartbeat by heartbeat, the dark abated, becoming gray and then colored like the rainbow. Johnny was certain he was no longer in London, England, 1910 as everything seemed familiar and yet alien.

No longer falling, if he ever had been, Johnny was certain he was floating – but to where, towards what, he did not know. Suddenly, he heard a distant sound, a beautiful sound, that came from nowhere and yet was everywhere at once.

Voices, singing, music – nothing like he’d ever heard before came to his ears — and the magnificent sound intensified. His fear left him and his curiosity had taken hold and Johnny found he couldn’t get enough of the mosaic of colors and the otherworldly music.

In each splinter and jag of light, Johnny saw images, moving pictures, seamlessly fashioned together as if it were his own memory, flashing before his eyes. At first he tried not to watch, but he couldn’t help himself – Johnny, like a moth pulled to the street lamp, found himself drawn to the flashing images.

“Is this knowledge, a dream or am I dead?” he asked himself as the images came to him at a pace faster than he could think.

He saw two great wars, where millions upon millions died, with one being cleansed by a great fire.  Following this came yet two more wars, but not before seeing a tree, its branches overshadowing  the earth, with powder blue apples, growing it’s roots like tentacle’s into humanity.

His curiosity intensified as he reached out, touching the light. It was clear and bright, like rarefied water, his finger sending concentric ripples emanating throughout the glittering material.

Johnny watched in fascination and horror as nation’s rose and still other’s faded, some in their own violence. He saw bad and good men come, and these same men go and finally a great bloody battle in which a white falcon slew a great brown and red dragon.

In what may have been a lifetime, or mere seconds, Johnny found himself bathed in the warm glow of a multifaceted and color-filled light, one that beamed from a single crystalline being in the midst of a swarm of what he believed to be butterflies. But before he could investigate further, a dog-paddling dog bumped him away.

“What is it about dogs?” he asked in frustration, though there was no one to hear him.

The impact sent the old man careening away from the lighted and sparkling being and the scores of butterflies. Instead, he tumbled head-over-heel into a chasm made of shiny rock, much like a mirror, only clearer.

As he stabilized himself and looked up, he saw himself – a younger man than when he first fell in the carpet-bag. The change made him cry out in surprise.

As he continued through the cleft, he saw himself change to an ever-younger self, until he was a mere lad of three or four. That’s when he noticed the youngster next to himself.

“Where’d you come from – did you fall in Mary’s bag, too?” Johnny asked.

“No,” said the child, “I’ve been here all along.”

“You don’t say!”

“I’ve been waiting on you.”

“You don’t say!”

“Yes, Michael.”

“That’s not my name.”

“It soon will be.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m your twin, Michael. I’m Mitchell.”

“I don’t have a twin — and my name is Johnny!”

“Look,” Mitchell said as he pointed towards the chasm wall.

There in the reflection of the opening were Johnny and Mitchell, side-by-side, looking identical in every way. Furthermore, they were growing younger by the twinkling and the sight left Johnny gobsmacked and unable to utter a word.

Mitchell smiled, “Soon we’ll be nothing more than a life-spark.” He continued, “And then my job will be done and I’ll return from where I started and you’ll be on your own to begin again.”

“But what about my life up…” Johnny started as Mitchell interrupted him.

“There? Shortly, you’ll remember nothing – not even this.”

“There’s no way I could ever forget this.”

Suddenly, Johnny realized his cockney brogue had vanished and he was no longer physically speaking – he was talking and hearing, but it all came to his mind with out a single vocalization. None of it was making sense, if any of it ever had.

“You’ll forget most of it,” Mitchell smiled at Johnny, “I’ve been through this many times. Believe me. Heads up!”

Without much warning,  the pair slipped quickly into a bubble of very warm, gelatinous soup. “Dear, God!” Johnny choked, “We’re being boiled to death.”

“It’s okay, Michael.”

“No it’s not – and for the last time – my name’s Johnny!”

Months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds may have passed by– he couldn’t tell as he felt a sudden constriction, a tightness that promised to squeeze the life from his now chubby body. He watched as Mitchell disappeared through a narrow gap into another bright light, all the while instructing him, “Come on, follow me.”

Without warning, Johnny came cascading out, coughing and sputtering, and into waiting hands. Also without warning, he heard himself screaming in panic as he found himself being passed from one person to the next.

“What the devil’s happening,” he shouted. But something was wrong, his words were like gibberish, garbled and non-nonsensical, which added further to his fright.

“We’re so sorry,” a voice thundered over head. “He’s still-borne and there’s nothing more that can be done.”

“What was his name again,” a female asked. Another answered, “Mitchell.”

“Poor, sweet baby boy, never had a chance,” yet another woman stated. “But the second baby boy is certainly lively – screaming and kicking like the dickens.”

“I’m so confused,” Johnny cried. “What’s happening and where am I?”

“Welcome to the world, little man,” cooed the first woman’s voice. “Michael is a strong name.”

“I’m Johnny!” the once old man cried as he found himself in the arms of yet another woman. She tucked him in next to her chest and introduced him to her breast.

“I’m Johnny,” he gurgled, “I’m John…hey…this is… good… I…I needed this…thank you.”

As he continued to suckle, Johnny grew more and more content until he no longer had any wish to remember the world he had left. And thanks to Mary Poppins’ magic carpet-bag, Johnny, now named Michael, would soon enough learn of the world he had entered – New York City, USA, 1960.

From somewhere on the street below a dog started barking.

Sigmund Freud believed flying dreams were a means of sexual release. But he thought that about everything.

For me, taking flight begins with the ‘hop, skip, jump,’ like in track-and-field, ending in a gentle landing, running as if I were using a ram-air parachute. A friend of mine claims flying dreams represents freedom, hope, control, motivation or a new perspective; the desire to escape from the stresses and pressures of everyday life; that the dreamer has reached a higher spiritual connection; or that the dreamer simply thinks they’re better than everyone else.

My flying dreams have stopped since learning this.

Awoke bone-stiff – old age perhaps – and there’s nothing I can do beyond remain mentally and emotionally young. The morning’s air is chilled, and I inhale it slowly, recalling the day’s chores ahead of me.

The stars are unbelievable, glittering across a blackened sky. It was supposed to rain today, turning to snow – but now – not a cloud in sight.

I feel insignificant in this universe and yet I’m fully cognizant of it.

And as morning starts to fade in, I’m glad my sore bones got me up in time to watch the sun rise. Thank you for Your tender mercies.