Of creepy silent companions and the Sunday Whirl

I've been making Halloween decorations and writing the Sunday Whirl.Round here we don't really use happy orange streamers and twinkly lights.Round here we use taxidermy animals and life-like reproductions of the creepiest things we can think of. (Creepy, not gory)So this year I thought I would like to make some silent companions – 16th and 17th century painted boards for children to have in their nurseries. Really. For real. I'm serious, they used to be really popular. Now they are museum pieces.Can you think of anything creepier? Yeah, me neither.I’m sure that if my parents put silent companions into my nursery I probably would have gone mad. But then again, beheadings aren’t good reasons to hold village festivals any more, are they?I made two: one in an Edwardian gown and one in Elizabethan outfit.Looking at them this evening got me thinking about writing the Sunday Whirl. I wanted to make it descend into something creepy. Here’s what I managed with these rather tame words:recommend, happening, cabinet, cafe, shelter, handle,peanuts, fern, job, guide, score, face, sturdyWe sat in the cafe and I was staring at the green mermaid on my coffee cup.Just me and Eve and the girl who was cleaning the glass cabinet with a soft cloth blued with Windex and moving the trail mix and packages of almonds and peanuts to one side.Apparently answering my questions was not Eve’s job. She said she could only guide me on my health journey but she could recommend I talk to someone more suited, more willing to help.I said the shelter I’m imagining doesn’t come from a pill or a sturdy helper in white scrubs.I don’t want constrictions that will attack my mind, that will keep score till I focus.Till I get a handle on what is happening.This is a gradual process, like smoking. Like an internal genocide which doesn’t show up for yearsMy mind just gets stuck. Gets hung in the dream of running thru soft wet gardens of fern and brackenOf places kept secret until I let my mind wander there to encounter the sacred.When I see Eve in that Garden I will smile as though we understand each other, as though we share some intimate secret, of how we knew what was happening.But not Eve. Eventually Eve will stop keeping score. Eventually the green mermaid will swim away and then there can be peace.So I sat there and stared at the green mermaid on my coffee cup and I felt her staring straight back at my face. Art: (more like fun) Plywood cut out using jig saw, painted with acrylics.