Shaking from the core, her fingers struggle to find the keys

So much at stake, so many people she could fail to please

There they sit in rows and rows all dreaming of money and fame

If only they could see what it will be like to live in debtor’s chains

Every year they file in to this conference room to take that test

I set it up and clean it up, and I’ll be just another face they forget

When you encounter it, there is a draw. Like a passionate ex. You know it’s over but there is a longing that you cannot deny.

You know it so well. The power it holds. The promise of joy, of peace, of escape. So often you reached for it in your times of need and always it was there, soothing your tortured soul.

It came in so many different forms. Sometimes it made you laugh, sometimes it wrapped itself around you as you broke down in tears.

Today you just want it to keep its distance - to leave you be. It is so hard to be true to yourself in the face of all that the world throws your way. Couldn’t it have decency to leave you alone for a while?

It is, after all, dry January.

It was listed as a fixer-upper. According to the broker, the family one day just up and left, didn’t even bother taking their things. The bank repossessed the old 1919 house and put it on the market “as is.”

I love a good challenge, but even I had a hard time seeing the potential in this place through all the boarded up windows, dust covered clutter, and exposed wiring. It was hard to imagine anyone could have lived here, much less a family with little kids.

The broker had mentioned kids, and there were signs of them all over the house. A crib still half made up. A room with a race car bed and ninja turtles posters. And a space in the basement that must have been the playroom.

Carefully stepping between the toys strewn about, including a mix of hot wheels and plastic tea sets, I came upon a small notebook, tucked away in the living room of an oversized hand made dollhouse - the dollhouse was actually quite beautifully made, probably by a doting parent or grandparent.

On the cover of the notebook a young hand had written “private property of Abigail - Keep Out.” Opening it - despite the warning - to last entry in what must have been Abigail’s journal, there were just two words: “He’s back!” And next to those words, bloody streaked fingerprints…small ones, surely those of a child.

Without anything else to go on, I was pretty sure Abigail and her family hadn’t just up and left. They’d been taken.

The rain was quickly turning to snow as the sun set and temperature plummeted. This high in the mountain range in late November it was to be expected.

He knew he shouldn’t get caught on the mountain when he left his car at the trailhead that morning, but he wasn’t worried. He knew this mountain well. He knew the weather patterns and the rocky trails that wound their way to the summit. He was pretty sure he could find his way down the trail at night even without a headlamp.

To be safe, he packed an emergency blanket, hat and gloves, a liter of water and some protein bars. In the unlikely event that something did happen, he figured he could survive a couple of cold nights.

Of course he couldn’t have anticipated what happened as he reached the summit and turned for home. The sky had become unnaturally dark. A mass of moving blackness obscured what little sun was pushing through the grey bank of rain clouds. Screeching, unlike anything he’d ever heard, accompanied the moving mass. They were birds of some kind, he thought. But at this elevation? In that number?

Fear gripped him and he began to descend as rapidly as he could. They followed. Passed overhead. Circled back. Dove toward him. Black like crows but wingspans like hawks. From a hundred feet away he could see their razor sharp talons.

He abandoned the trail, running for whatever he could find that might provide cover - might hide him from the swarm. For the remaining daylight hours he hid and listened. They were never far, but they at least were not pursuing him.

At dusk there was finally silence. He no longer was sure where he was, but he knew he needed shelter. He crawled out slowly from behind the rocks that had been his shield and walked, scanning the mountainside for a place to spend the night.

There, 50 yards up the side of the mountain, he spotted a dark hole in the grey rock wall - a cave. If he could just scramble up there, he could get out of the elements, wait out the night, and maybe even sleep a little. Tomorrow he could figure out where he was and get back to the safety of his car.

It took time. More than once he lost his grip and slipped backwards. But just as night was fully descending on him and the rain was turning to snow, he reached the mount of the cave. Exhausted, he dropped to the floor and thought about his family at home. They would be worried that he hadn’t come home. Maybe they’d send help.

Just then he heard it. The unmistakable sound of talons scraping the cave wall behind him.

Day 547. A year and a half. “Guilty.” The word still haunts the moments just before I awake each morning. I open my eyes and the nightmare is real. I stare up a the ceiling of my merciless six by eight foot box with nothing but shades of grey and a door that I cannot open.

I read the poem in high school, the one by Frost, with a line that put a strangle hold on my imagination - “I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

It was a call to adventure. To throw off the shackles of convention. The rules were for others to follow. Fulfillment would come only with the courage to take the road less traveled.

Or at least that’s how my 16 year old mind understood the line. It became my mantra. And for a while it worked. Until the day it didn’t.

Now I’m here, on a road less traveled, but it’s less traveled because no one would ever want to go where this road leads.

[A speech to a joint meeting of the leadership of the Songu and Plena Clans on their home planet Arcania]

A common enemy brings us together. We have fought countless battles in our struggle to control the riches of this land, but today we face a threat that puts both our clans in jeopardy.

Our truce and this pact for mutual support give us the best chance to survive the coming assault from the Galitinians. Their technology is far superior to ours, and they fight without adherence to the rules of war.

But this is our home world, we know it better. We will exploit the dangers and opportunities that lie in the hillsides and ravines, in the tunnels and the desolate sands. Our people are stronger, and they will fight fiercely to protect this place from those who would take their home world.

Together we are more than strong enough to drive out these brutal invaders.

Let us raise a glass now and drink to the solemn bond of alliance in battle. Tomorrow, where there were two clans there will be one united fighting force standing brave and prepared to do battle to the end to defend Arcania!

He circled the track as he had for more than fifteen years.

In the beginning, he circled a dirt track in Paige, Texas driving a stock car held together by his own sweat.

She fell for him hard. It wasn’t that he was good - he was - it was his commitment to the craft.

He’d noticed her, at the Saturday night races with her friends, and asked her out after picking up his tiny winner’s check.

From that day forward, she was by his side, his personal pit crew as he raced his way up the ranks.

For years they didn’t have two nickels to rub together. She cleaned houses while he pursued his dream. They agreed to wait on children, her dream.

Through it all, his commitment to be the best race car driver never wavered. Soon enough he was sponsored and on the path to racing NASCAR.

She still loved his commitment to excellence, but she could tell his commitment to her was getting lost in the pomp and circumstance of his success.

He had more than enough nickels of his own now, and he didn’t need her in the pit. She felt herself fading away in his review mirror.

Sitting here now, watching him circle the famed Talladega Superspeedway on his way to the checkered flag, she knew it was over.

The crowd cheered. She sat silently shedding tears. Hers was part of his success story that likely would never be told.

Selina walked this stretch of beach every day, so she knew right away something was different.

Approaching from hundreds of yards back, all she knew for sure was that something was on the beach that normally wasn’t. It could be a very stationary group of people, a large piece of driftwood, a pile of seaweed.

The closer she got, the more unsure of her eyesight she became. The something she was walking toward appeared to be…a piano. But how? Why? Maybe it just looked like a piano from where she stood?

When she finally arrived at the object there were other people starting to gather around. There was no longer any doubt about it, it was a piano.

It wasn’t just any piano, it was so ornate, it looked like something straight out of a European palace. The beautiful instrument also appeared weathered but undamaged - not like it had spent weeks being tossed about by the ocean before being deposited so perfectly on all four legs in the sand.

Selina moved slowly around the piano, peering closely but not touching it for fear that it might disintegrate like a sand sculpture in the wind. Others were being equally cautious.

As she came around the front of the piano, she noticed faded writing in gold leaf calligraphy on the beautifully carved wood just above the keys. It said: “R.M.S. Titanic.” She read it again, just to be sure.

Looking into the eyes of the other beachcombers near her who’d read the inscription as well, she saw they had the same astonished question she did: How could that be possible?

“It’s where legends dwell” were her parting words to me as I hoisted my bag onto my shoulder and stepped out on to the front porch.

This was just the kind of strangely disquieting statement I’d come to expect from my aging and deteriorating mother. What could she possibly mean? I told her I was taking a bag of my old clothes to Goodwill and that was her comment.

Driving down King Blvd., I turned the phrase over in my mind. What kinds of legends would dwell at Goodwill, of all places? I could hardly think of a setting less suited to heroic battles, mythical characters engaged in epic struggles between good and evil.

As I turned into the Goodwill parking lot I laughed out loud. My mother’s meaning was all of a sudden very clear. On a banner above the door: “Donate Today - Meet the Village People!” Her all time favorite band.

If I count the ways I love you it misses the point. Our love cannot be quantified like the miles we’ve run, or the places we’ve visited. Our love surrounds all of every moment of every day. It is the lens through which all our experience is refracted. Sometimes what appears is hard to see, even painful. But viewed through any other lens life would be less moving, less passionate, less alive.