flax-golden

lonely ghosts in the machine

I still don’t understand why an antique store needs to be open twenty-four hours a day, but the owner is nice and pays well and since hardly any customers come in during the night shift I have plenty of time to read.

The main distraction is the typewriter.

On my second night, one of several typewriters on a cluttered display started making this dinging sound and the keys kept flipping up and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it so I gave it a piece of paper.

It typed a lot, though not particularly well. It said hello and made a joke about being trapped in an antique store, or at least I think it was a joke.

I asked the owner about it in the morning when he came in for the day shift and he nodded and said that particular typewriter was haunted and suggested I not give it more than one piece of paper a night.

I tried, but there seem to be a lot of voices in there and they have a lot to say so I buy extra reams of paper and let them type all night if they want to.

They send love to different people.

They make jokes and tell stories.

I think they just want someone to talk to.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

not a real dog

Momma says he’s not a real dog. She says he’s “just a statue” and “not a particularly impressive one at that.”

She says I shouldn’t pretend he’s a real dog because he’s not and I am “too old” for pretending.

But the dog tells me that Momma is “speaking nonsense” and I should “pay her no heed” and he talks with an English accent which makes him sound very serious so I keep listening to him, which is not pretending but Momma doesn’t seem to know the difference.

(Momma says he can’t talk but he says she doesn’t listen properly. Then he complains that this “arrangement” is “beneath” him and sometimes he calls us all “peasants.”)

He likes to be placed on chairs near lamps because he says it makes him look more dignified, but Momma always moves him and then I have to move him back and re-arrange the lamps.

He demands (“requests”) fresh flowers from the garden every day and I get them for him even though it makes Momma mad.

I’d rather Momma be mad than the dog.

He bites when he’s angry.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

encounter with my younger self at an intersection of paths taken and not

When I reach another fork in the path there is a boldly lettered sign on a tree that reads “TRAIL” accompanied by an equally bold directional arrow.

In front of it stands a small girl with a teal backpack and ribboned pigtails, staring at the sign with a quiet, serious intensity.

I am having an internal debate about whether to follow the sign or to see where this other path goes, she informs me before I can ask her if she’s lost.

She points down a path on the right, equally trail-like and leaf-covered, one of several options that the left-pointing arrow has chosen to ignore.

I ask if she’s worried about getting lost. She shakes her head, pigtails a-flutter, and explains to me that she has a phone and GPS and she can yell really loud if need be.

The woods are not that big, she tells me, and she gives my hand a comforting little pat. But you can walk through them different ways so the walking seems longer and has more surprises, and you always get to where you’re supposed to be eventually, even if you get stuck for a while or the walking makes your feet hurt.

She gives me a macaroon from her backpack and a cheerful wave before she heads off along the unarrowed trail.

I stare at the sign after she goes for a long time, internally debating which path to take myself while I nibble my macaroon.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

numerical meanings

People always ask me what the numbers mean.

They assume I know just because I put them there.

I don’t, not in any way that I can articulate.

My mother used to say it was a gift but she doesn’t anymore. I think she also thought it would be a phase.

I tried to stop a couple of times but the numbers itch in my brain, whispering where they want to go and what order to carve them in and I can’t think of anything else until I do.

They mean different things, which makes it complicated.

Sometimes they’re significant dates or countdowns, others are coded messages (always in different codes) and once they were winning lottery numbers but no one realized until it after the fact and I think that might have been a coincidence, I can’t be sure.

I never know what to tell people when they ask, because the answer could be anything, it could even be nothing.

It’s hard to translate numbers into words.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

a bluer blue blue sky

I steal the color from the sky sometimes.

Sorry.

Though technically it’s not the sky’s own color anyway, it’s a reflection of the ocean. Also technically it is borrowing and not stealing because I always give it back.

I keep it in a specially made glass ball that I hang from a tree in my backyard for safekeeping until I decide to give it back. The glass is clear when it’s empty but when the sky is inside it turns blue blue and gets slightly heavier.

I should probably feel bad about it but I don’t.

I think people appreciate the blue blue sky more when they don’t see it all the time.

They miss it on the empty color sky days and the missing makes the returning happier.

And it makes the blue blue look even bluer.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

possibly imaginary (but still perilous) sea journey

We found a round old-fashioned map on a ball so we decided to take a sea journey because most of the map ball is oceans.

Parts of it are worn off and it has lot of lines and dots and numbers, with distances in “nautical miles” which we decide are what kilometers turn into when you are in a boat.

We toss our guide ball in the air so it can have a better view of where we’re going but it always says things are in the same place when it comes back down, it is very sure of itself.

We hit rough seas and almost lose our guide which would have been tragic but tragedy was averted because we held onto it tightly enough. We make a life vest for it out of a scarf and some string and we make it wear the vest and tie it down whenever the boat starts to sway too much.

There are sharks but they don’t bother us because we are polite and also because they just had their lunch which we suspect was fish but they don’t say, they only smile.

We travel along the blue dotted line from Yokohama to Honolulu because we like the sounds of the names but we get bored halfway there and drift in lazy circles instead.

We wonder if we are allowed to visit New Ireland before we visit Old Ireland, which we cannot find on the ball and assume it must be on one of the worn-off spots but we don’t know which one and we think guessing might prove dangerous.

A mermaid gives us a little flag with a clock on it when we pass the International Date Line and we let it flutter in the wind as we sail into the future or possibly the past.

(We are not quite certain which side is which.)

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.