Rising from sleep.
Becoming awake. Awareness, the great creature of silent perception comes from the dark abyss of sleep, where it languishes in the compression of the deep. It ascends. Bubbles of random memories, thoughts, hopes, and reflections trail in it's move towards the surface. Shafts of light infused with sound and color thrust down through the surface to guide and entice.
We sit on the edge of the bed. We have surfaced, still, the waters of sleep are drying on us.
Awareness. We look around for a millisecond as if reborn to a new world and in a blink have been enveloped by the familiar. A song replays in our mind. It is the song of yesterday connecting today. The tides of sleep wash against us as if beckoning us back. The song is stronger and the begins to drone like the great machine.
It is the song of the Gandy Dancers who straighten the tracks of desire, of compliance and direction.

Some listen and dance. Some Dance and ignore the song. Some sing their own song to dance to. Some just live the song of life.

Fleecy blankets of coastal overcast. Lumbering feather bed pillows pretending to be clouds shower the flat lands. High buttermilk skies.
Even a contrail can stifle the Sun light if only for a moment. Some cities are tucked in under the blankets for most of the year seems to be only stretching, yawning but never really waking up.
An illusion of cloud cover?
Sleepy in Seattle?
Driving the summer hyways under blistering Sun we look for that bit of shade a passing cloud can provide. It becomes a respite as if only, in that instant of shade, we can collect our thoughts and breath a sigh of relief.
Walking the streets of Ketchikan, Alaska or under the lower 48 summer storm skies, there are always blue skies at thirty thousand feet.

Warm sultry days when the Warlords of great dark clouds move our way.
They turn the heads of playing children and bustling adults. Even the birds seem to feel what is coming in the air.
Thunder and lightning rumble in the distance.
Dry grass and thirsty trees almost shiver in anticipation.
We may stand at an open window and feel the breeze of the coming storm.
We may be sitting out with friends or on our way to an appointment.
Then we smell the air. That smell of rain coming.
The first fat drops hit with the sound that rings deep in our memory. A sound of fat drop hitting the flour dry dirt, the hard hot concrete, the tin roof of a shed, or the top of an awning.
The smell of a Summer Rain is the sound of life.

Memories are grist for the mill stone of the heart.

The landscape of the early dutch coast. Windmills moving sentinels on flat fields claimed from the sea. Turning, pushed by sea breeze filling turning sails on ships that never leave. Inside the heart of the windmill are the wood gears moving the great mill stones. Grinding harvest into flour to feed and sustain.
The harvest becoming grist for the mill.
We, like windmills. are moving from the capricious winds of time and our harvest of experiences become grist for the millstones of the heart.
Sometimes grinding, sometimes crushing,always changing to make the flour.
Flour, like the product of our living in the wind, becomes the base, the foundation for nourishment.

In the fields of a reclaimed land, wind blowing, we hold the grain of life. And we see the grain will pass through the millstone of the heart and nourish us.

The millstone of the heart is the telling passage.

Cleaning the halls, maintaining the palace...what a bother!

In the Carpathian Mountains were the Abereshe of the Illyrian who trod the lush Spring meadows and rugged pristine rock walls near the mountain palace. It's like has been seen in the hearts of the poor and the rich; the weak and the powerful.
As the secret of ice is life giving water frozen immobile, then the secret of the mountain palace is those who built it.
Without the people the Mountain Palace is pointless.
For one to rule in the Mountain Palace is also pointless.

Those of Illyria who lived above the timberline came to the Palace when it was empty. After Grand Illusions rode the backs of poverty with the whip of injustice and the chains of lies. After the corrupt kept knowledge from all but themselves. After they died in golden robes while in the dungeon of illusion and fear.
They left no ghosts or legacy.

The Illyrians came in to the halls of the great palaces. They used the halls for meetings of the tribes, for a sheltered place for trade and as the Mountain Palace began to crumble, the tribes used the stones and built homes, roads and shelters.
High in the mountains one of the stones can still be found generation after generation holding a door open for friends on a warm summer day.

Illyrian: Abereshe; just one of the tribes of humans.
One of us.
(humans know who they are and harbor no fear but caution)

Humans who help each other. Humans who comfort the sick, laugh, join in brotherhood and sisterhood, without question, without condition and without fear.

Those who take away freedom, who torture, who trick with words, who make laws to steal, who step on the backs on the family of humanity are not human.

Be patient, move quietly, do good works, and stay out of the way of these smiling monsters.

Addendum: There is a Great Queen who moves among us. She doesn't know she is a Queen. A descendant of the Great Illyrian Queen that defeated Roman Legions.
She moves about, living in different places, working menial jobs, helps friends, gets cranky and sleeps at night,,,,just like us...because she is one of us.