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We walked down the lane to the art show area because they had had to close the road to vehicle traffic. Lots of paintings and sculptures were in a central area and people were everywhere near a large wooden stage constructed at the far end of the meadow. At night they put candles into paper sacks weighted with dirt at the base of every huge green tree so the path was lit in a pools of yellow light.

By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong and everywhere there was song and celebration. I started passing out hundreds and hundreds of joints we had rolled travelling across the country plucked from Kansas heedless hedgerows to anyone that wanted them. There had been a big drought of weed in the NYC area that year and we were as welcome as rain in April. I wandered around as if on a cloud of spiritual bonhomie and then heard some music . . . and was told it was Richie Havens tuning his guitar. He had broken a string. I was amazed; I hadn't known there was going to be music, too!

Waking up on Sunday morning I saw the drab green Army Reserve helicopters with guys in those old jungle green camouflage fatigues tossing out the early ancestors of MRIs (Meals Ready To Eat) or, as Hugh Romney of Hog Farm (later called Wavy Gravy) was calling out: our breakfast in bed. Earlier we had roused from the prevalent mud to listen to Jefferson Airplane and remembering deep in the dark night, Ravi Shankar and earlier yet, that young girl they hoisted up onto the stage because the Baha’i’s were painting the message "WE ARE ONE" on the stockade fence they put up in front of the stage.

I remember never being able to pee when I needed to. I remember meeting a girl that I met years later out in Berkeley, or rather she remembered me when we met again out there. I remember storming the hamburger booths up on the hill because they were charging 5.00 a burger. . . and that is why they sent out the National Guard by Sunday. . . all those worried parents didn't want their children getting hungry. We wanted peace in Vietnam and the drab Army green came to our rescue. We thought it a good thing. It rained. I remember hearing that on huge battlefields it rained a lot too, something about the noise on the ground made a disturbance in the ethers. Jimi Hendrix played in the rain, and Crosby Stills, Nash and Young went acoustic. We all thought that Dylan was going to show, though. He never did.

It took me three weeks to get out of there. We finally got the car turned around and went back to NYC. I was hurting pretty bad, 4 months pregnant and passing kidney stones, so they dropped me off on historic St Mark's Place and then they drove on back to Lawrence, KS without me.

I, on the other hand, was alone in New York City with $20.00 in my pocket, barefoot, shorts and little crop top - wild child- utterly clueless of the danger and utterly unprepared for life, but ready to start my next new adventure!

Great story sinsboldy!

Excerpt of the first draft of Chapter 3 of a short story I'm writing. It's sh***y and immature, but I can revise it.

Clunk! Clunk! Clunk! Clunk! Adabelle lifted the hammer and clunk! clunk! clunk!--the stake went down, down, down. Raising hammer. Clunk! Raising hammer Clunk! Sweat dripped from her face, her arms tensed, her face rosy.

"Almost done Adabelle?" Gunner said as he knelt on the grass. Brown bags about the size of deer lay beside him. He gripped the bag an stuffed the pouch with straw form the carriage. and he stuffed and stuffed and stuufed some more--and more. One more stuffing. Plop!--he place the pouch upright and wiped his forehead. Pheew!

Cunk! "Almost got it now." Clunk! "Okay, done!" And she stood up and ran and bump, bump, bump along the stakes. Bump-bum-bump-bump-bump! Bum-bump-bump! "Whoa!" and thud!--a Belly Adabelly laid on the grass. "Ow!" she said as her knees pulsed. "Ooooooow..."

And who could that be in front of our Adabelle? Dannel. of course, picking apples from the tree and--one, two-three--juggling them. Steady, steady. Pow right on the head, the poor thing, the chunks of apples nestlied in his hair and tunic and knothat. Alas? what to do?

Adabelle, hips on her hand her hand, her fingers bent towards the sky, puffed her cheeks (again, do I have to tell you people) "And what are you doing Deerjoker? Go help us!"
"I already did my part," a sticky Dannel said as he pointed to a tent--a circus tent to be axcact--looming along the wind.

Adabelle frowned and leaned forwad and forward and--well--forward. "That's only part of the workin! What about Tiger Siger, Deer Cleer, the rest'a'em to be exact?"

Dannel facepalmed himselp. "Awwwn, punderbunders, I forgot about them." And with that he ran and ran and ran some more intil he seemed like a new monster (better put him on my entry) and then gone behind the flaps of the tent.

Noon. gunner and Adabelle wrapped the end of the bags full of straw into the bottom of the columns attached to a coverbridge. One two thre wrap. One two tree wrap one two three wrap. Adabelle smacked the column, and what do you know--it swings.

"Now that ew have that done", Gunner said, lets go to the creek."

Adabelle huffed, huffed, huffed some more. Wheew! "Alrighty!"

So step, step, step, step ,step, step ,step, step, crunch! and stop.

Time travel is easy. On thousands of worlds, multiple times, it's been discovered, used, and the results vanished from apparent existence. Invariably, a scientist would create the machine, and then hop in and go, never to be seen again.

The thing with time travel is, you're moving in the fourth dimension, which is not a problem. The real problem is, the other 3 dimensions are also moving. Our intrepid chrononaut would be in the same location, but the planet would have moved, and having moved. The unlucky traveler would materialize where the planet was, or would be, and die simultaneously of lack of air, heat, and the usual effects of no spacesuit on someone in space.

Every now and again, another scientist would get smart, and make an airtight machine, where they would spend hours trying to calculate how to get back to the time and place where they started. Most would reverse course, and either bury themselves deep underground, or wind up augering in their expensive equipment from a great height.

Even rarer were those who actually made it back. On Earth, in the mid-22nd century, one man, Orlando Cogitus, realized the problem once he was deep in interstellar space, and made the correct calculations (to within a few feet, the landing legs were never the same again), and discovered not time travel, but space travel.

Once you calculated the velocities of the planets' rotation, orbit, star speed through the galaxy, etc., you had a clear path leading through space for millions of light years. Calculating where made it possible to put the craft in the vicinity of another star by just traveling through time to your destination. As a 20th-century hockey player said 'you didn't skate to where the puck was, but where it was going to be'

The problem now was finding stars along the line. Since many of the paths were curved, there were a precious few stars in the immediate vicinity, but back around the time of the dinosaurs, a whole galactic arm swung through the timespace that the Cogitus Path intersected.

So, mankind got busy. There was a consortium of nations that built exploration ships, real spacetime ships that could go through a planetary system. They were the first, the famous, and they brought back enough data to start colonizing worlds, and creating a stellar community.

Eventually the price came down, and even cheap enough that private companies could go prospecting and exploring. Thousands of ships were launched; from huge tanker-sized units to small, two-person modules. And that's where the story begins.

That's about as far as I can post with that one... It's mainly a teaser.

Her heart seemed to stall as the drums first beats whispered across her papery skin. To her failing ears the sound of their beats was muffled and distant; but touch had yet to fade and it nullified the lies her ears told her.

Thump… Thump… Tat-a-tat-a thump, thump tat-a thump.. Thump, thump…

As intangible as the drum beat was solid, the silky whisper of a fife and lute slide across her. It felt like the caress of twin ribbons trailed over and around her; one of soothing water, the other of warm smoke.

She inhaled from the pipe, deep enough that it seemed she was trying to pull the fluttering, jumping melody that had joined the other sensations down into her lungs. The teasing touches from the lively fiddle reminded her of the hurried yet graceful flight of a frightened moth.

A moth that ebbed to life in the smoke she exhaled, fluttering and twining with two liquid, airy ribbons; all pulsing vividly with the call of the drums. Another deep inhalation expelled. It flung the image swirling apart, and from the chaotic wisps swirled a dancer of smoke. The dancer was hypnotic to watch, airy veils and skirts mingling with smoky limbs.

So consuming was its dance that only the edge of consciousness noticed the old women now being lost in her own smoke. You would only catch glimpses from the stare of her milky eyes before she was enveloped by the grey haze.

The smoke dancer blurred with the pace of the music until a final, resounding thrum from the drums made it fly apart as the air rippled and dashed the smoky dancer and cloud apart.

Sitting in the remains of the wispy haze was a young woman dressed in the bright veils of a dancer. She smiled, mischief flashing in her dark yet familiar gaze, as she set down a cooling pipe.

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This is from a project I'm working on called Subsequent Remnants, were I'm posting story snippets as they come to me on a blog. (Warning posting schedule is hit or miss. Things get too hectic once in a while and I just can't write for a couple of days unless it's a deadline for something that isn't for me). www.subsequentremnants.wordpress.com

He was lying on the beach. There was crystal clear water. He didn’t know California had that, but it was beautiful, and very relaxing. He watched the waves as they came in and went out again. They sounded like snoring. He laughed and the waves sounded like laughter. He sighed and they sighed.

A girl was watching him. Not a little girl, not at all. She was just the kind he pictured whenever he heard that song. Bikini clad, tan skin, her dark hair touched with light streaks from days spent surfing and sunning. He smiled, only to look down and see that he was wearing his shirt and jacket over his swim trunks. Of course, he realized. He didn’t want to get burned.

The girl approached him and said, “Can I rub some lotion on your back?”

Could she? He quickly took off the jacket and the shirt and flopped onto his stomach. The girl began to rub tanning butter on his shoulders.

He sighed. Maybe this was a dream. Maybe he had fallen asleep on the beach and this was just a dream telling him to wake up before he got burned.

“That's nice,” he said. “Do you rub lotion on every guy that comes here?”

“Oh, no,” she cooed. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

Uh-huh. It was nice. Too nice, that was the trouble. Much to his great regret, he knew it had to end. He sat up and said, “Well, thank you. I’ll be fine with just that.”

“Oh, but I wanted to rub more of you,” she said with a pout.

“I kinda figured. That’s why this has to stop.”

“I don't understand, but... what about tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” Tomorrow he would have better sense than to leave himself this open.

“Just maybe?” she asked, her eyes welling with tears.

“Maybe not!” someone shouted.

He startled. The serenity of the beach scene was shattered when another girl leaped between them and pointed a wicked-looking, two handed... weapon, at the first girl’s throat.

“Back away,” said the newcomer.

Henry goggled. This girl was wearing full body armor from neck to feet, black with red marks upon it, leather gloves, strangely practical boots, and a smooth black helmet that fit her head closely. Her expression was angry, almost unhinged, as she touched the bikini-clad girl’s neck with the tip of what look like something from a science fiction movie.

“Wha… what…” he began incoherently. He did rather like the armor, but the homicidal tendencies did not comply with anything he would have expected his subconscious mind to supply.

“Help!” screamed the first girl at last.

“Get away from her!” he cried. It seemed like the right thing to do, even though he didn’t trust her, either. “You’re going to hurt her with that thing! She's barely wearing clothes, much less armor! And she's unarmed!”

The girl in armor snorted. “We have different ideas of what represents a weapon, stupid! Do yourself a favor and wake yourself up!”

“Wake? I guess I am asleep…” He had been pretty sure of it. Maybe if he just turned the situation around a little, this could be a pretty good dream after all... He realized that both girls were staring at him.

“What?” he asked as the girl in the bikini started to inch backward.

“You’re still here!” cried the second, glaring a warning at the cowering beach girl. She froze once more.

“Well, yeah.”

“Most people wake up when they figure out they’re sleeping.”

“Please help me,” begged the first girl. There were tears streaming down her cheeks. Had those been there a moment before?

“How?” he cried. “Besides, this is only a dream. Just wake yourself up if you’re real, but if I'm right then you’re probably not, so there’s no need for me to do anything, really, except to maybe try and change this dream into something more pleasant.”

The first girl’s eyes flicked to the side for just a second, then back to him. “This isn’t a dream! She’s crazy! She’ll kill me! Please!
She’s done it before!”

“Last chance,” said the girl with the sword.

“How would you know that?” he asked, watching an older couple stroll toward them as if nothing was wrong. He rose slowly and began dusting the sand off of his arms. “Did you read it in the newspapers? See it on the news?”

“It’s… um…” Her eyes flicked once more past the standing girl. Henry just had a moment. He hoped he was fast enough.

“Look out!” he cried as he launched himself behind the girl in the armor, plowing the strolling couple into the sand. He rolled away quickly but one of them swung something at him, something that glittered in the sunlight. It came close to his bare arm as he rolled, only to be smashed out of the air by the armored girl’s sword.

She was backing toward him, guarding him from all three now. He quickly stood.

“Either make yourself useful or wake up,” she snapped. “Talk is cheap.”

“Useful, how?”

“Dream up a weapon, a shirt, something!” She whipped her sword out abruptly and caught one of them across the face. He disappeared.

“What is this, a videogame?”

“This is a dream they made for you. If you hurt them badly enough, they can’t maintain their illusions.” She swung at the older woman and missed.

“But the guy disappeared!”

“So not all of these are real, dummy!” she cried, exasperated. "Some are diversions!"

He considered getting angry, but sighed sharply and instead imagined himself in armor similar to hers, with a baseball bat. He’d never played with a sword, but he had played his share of baseball.

The second stroller was backing away, along with the girl in the bikini, but the armor clad girl cried, “Too easy!” and whopped the other stroller across the top of the head with the flat of her sword.

The woman screamed, and disappeared.

“How can she feel pain if she isn’t real?” Henry cried, wondering what was next.

“I don’t know, but someone’s feeling it. It's her!” She swung at the bikini girl, who had been rummaging in her beach bag. The girl looked up in time and dodged.

Henry ran forward while she was off-guard and brought the bat down upon her head. She screamed and flickered, turning into a
plump, slightly hairy, middle-aged man before his eyes, mercifully wearing more than a bikini.

“Ugh,” he cried.

“Hope you’ve learned your lesson about cheap women,” cried the armored girl as she swung her sword for the man’s neck. He screamed and disappeared.

The beach vanished as well. They stood on a road in a forest, just the two of them.

Henry stared. He had been having strange, troubling dreams for some time, but this was something new. He had never found anyone fighting back before.

He turned to her and saw her wiping something from her sword. It was… red. “Blood? But… he disappeared!” he cried.

“You saw what your conscience was willing to show you,” she said, wiping a hand backward across her eyes. He could see tears sparkling on the back of her hand.

“You get to live for one more day,” she said thickly. “Don’t waste it.” She turned to go.

“Wait!” he cried, catching her by the arm. “How did you know?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I think it’s just my way of battling my own rage. I don’t even know if this is real. I do know that I’m asleep, so most likely this is just psychological. It’s just my subconscious fighting back in vain. I may never wake up.” She looked him up and down and sighed. "And that means you're not real, either."

He released her arm. "Disappointed?" he asked softly.

She stared at him for a long moment, and nodded. "I guess there's no risk in admitting it. Yeah, I am." She turned and walked away.