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Cheap perfume filled up the room.
The room filled with hanging veils.
The stories which follow,
maybe truth or imaginative travails.

An awkward teenager dreams, of coming of age,
a fantasized dream in the teenage night.
Push yourself forward, staying out of sight, howdy
is a good way to be alright and not too gawdy.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What does Orion rising look like to a camera? During this time of the year, the famous constellation is visible to the southeast just after sunset. From most Earthly locations, Orion's familiar star pattern, highlighted by the three-stars-in-a-row belt stars, rises sideways. An entire section of the night sky that includes Orion was photographed rising above Śnieżka, a mountain on the border between Poland and the Czech Republic. The long duration exposure sequence brings up many faint features including the Orion and Flame Nebulas, both encompassed by the curving Barnard's Loop. The featured wide-angle camera composite also captured night sky icons including the blue Pleiades star cluster at the image top and the red Rosette Nebula to the left of Orion. Famous stars in the frame include Sirius, Betelgeuse, Rigel and Aldebaran. Orion will appear successively higher in the sky at sunset during the coming months.

Photo by Marcin Ślipko

No one told me it would be like this—
how growing older is another passage of discovery
and that aging is one grand transformation,
and if some things become torn apart
or even lost along the way,
many other means show up
to bring me closer
to the center of my heart.

No one ever told me
if whatever wonder waits ahead
is in another realm and outside of time.
But the amazement, I found,
is that the disconcerting things
within the here and now
that I stumble and trip my way through,
also lead me gracefully home.

And no one told me that I would ever see
an earth so strong and fragile,
or a world so sad and beautiful.
And I surely didn't know
I'd have all this life yet in me
or such fire inside my bones.

From Susan Frybort, (author of Open Passages) poetry collection "Look to the Clearing" 

I'm having a flashback,
to a moment in time,
when I was alive
and entering my prime.

Navy life wasn't all,
it was cracked up to be,
however, I had this elation,
which set me free.

I'm just a man,
living with my grief,
why do I feel,
like an emotional thief?

Why do women,
flock around me?
I'm not interested,
and may never be.

Words come not easily,
during this time of remembrance.
I cannot leave words to luck,
or play words to a game of chance.

Why so much grief,
which tears at my soul.
Why am I sad and alone,
in this my life's toll?

A toll, a change,
another personal fee,
when it happens,
I remember thee.

I need to get me,
some of those skintight jeans,
so I can change my Baritone voice,
to a high-pitched Tenor

This is from 12/24/2017

Menehune are a mythological race of Dwarf people,
in Hawaiian tradition, who are said to live in the
deep forests and hidden valleys of the Hawaiian
Islands, hidden and far away from human settlements.
They built temples, fishponds, roads and homes.

Here is a story told to me by a gentleman from Lanai.

When I was a young child, age 12, I was in the hills of
Lanai when I spotted something in a brush patch.
I walked casually, forward to this patch and met a small
Menehune, who I found was also 12 years old. I was of
short stature, about 3 feet tall and the Menehune, was shorter.
I estimated he may have been 2 feet tall.

We talked for a while, then he said he had to go. I never saw him
again, until I was about 60 years old. Fate stepped in and
I met him once more. He was still 2 feet tall and didn't appear
to have aged. I recall my father saying, the Menehune, grew,
at a slower rate than humans and didn't age like the rest of us.

I am much older now, living at a retirement home in the Seattle area.
I hope to return to Lanai to see if my Menehune friend will be at the
same place, I last saw him.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

New landers are on the Moon. Nearly two weeks ago, Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) released two rovers as it descended, before its main lander touched down itself. The larger of the two rovers can hop like a frog, while the smaller rover is about the size of a baseball and can move after pulling itself apart like a transformer. The main lander, nicknamed Moon Sniper, is seen in the featured image taken by the smaller rover. Inspection of the image shows that Moon Sniper's thrusters are facing up, meaning that the lander is upside down from its descent configuration and on its side from its intended landing configuration. One result is that Moon Sniper's solar panels are not in the expected orientation, so that powering the lander had to be curtailed and adapted. SLIM's lander has already succeeded as a technology demonstration, its main mission, but was not designed to withstand the lunar night -- which starts tomorrow.

Photo by JAXA, Takara Tomy, Sony Co., Doshisha U.

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