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CWPates

@cwpates.com

1.8K followers 2.8K following 22 posts

#Artist, #Painter and #Writer @ substack.com/@downthewoodedpath www.cwpates.com #Hoarderofrarebirds, #permaculture Please, no blind DMs

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 28/04/2026

cwpates.substack.com/p/dont-tell-...

ii.) Pass Not

“You must descend”, called a voice through many years. The life of me ten years from now grinding away at my past, poking my lazy self. I haven’t written in months. Apart from the odd scribbled text touching on something old. This was old. Binah fallen, grieving her son.

“I dreamt of working a deep seafloor oil well. Huge habitable chambers descending to the ocean floor - stacked one on top of the other – each with oil extraction equipment, pipes going deep into the ground. Except the chambers were compromised, dark oil and water were rising quickly – a greasy dark mixture - as I climbed to escape. I had a single thin rope ladder to climb, and was clothed in heavy mining gear. Looking up there were thousands of feet to climb, the meager rope ladder disappearing into the darkness above. The black waters continuing to rise.”

We were leaving Arizona, and staying in our favorite cheap motel in Mammoth. The ‘mammoth’ gold strike and naming of the town that now sits half abandoned. Everything taken from the place. Its soul hanging between the riches excavated and the poverty of what was left.
Our little end kitchenette suite – next to the pool – with our small daughter running circles. The scrapyard dog behind his fence, behind our motel, barking. Guarding the night and that poverty. Barking and guarding his precious acres.
All the time they did baptisms - the remnants of Mammoth looking for a miracle - the congregation stood around the pool. And God and us drinking cocktails looking on through the pools barred walls. A full clothed baptism in a worn greasy suit. Something to get married in and die in I thought.
The water cold in Arizona’s late Spring, the sun scorching the edges of that cold. He came out of the water shivering, but undoubtedly reborn. The sun shimmering on his cheap suit.
Were we embracing two worlds, or just the one desperately seeking the other? A moment of alignment but not much more. The contradiction always there, the brutality…

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 05/07/2025

Brand new Birchen Laced (?) and gorgeous Spangled Rooster. Some way to meet Roderick’s passing. The Blue has Roderick’s soul, and then some.

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 23/05/2025

"You hear them approach at velocity, collide and buzz around your ears and occasionally get thwarted by ear hairs. But this egregious smite – like a neutrino through lead – flew straight to my eardrum. How thankful of ear hairs I will now remain! The first time I’ve ever heard a fly flap its wings"

Birthday Poem – For Virginia

You hear them approach at velocity, collide and buzz around your ears and occasionally get thwarted by ear hairs. But this egregious smite – like a neutrino through lead – flew straight to my eardrum. How thankful of ear hairs I will now remain!
The first time I’ve ever heard a fly flap its wings - a mechanical flip-flap for quite some minutes – a wonder I suppose! Meanwhile I was slapping myself on the other side of my head, cork crewing my very smallest finger and pulling at my ear in painful ways.
The human part of me was very distressed, something had breached my defenses and was moving to my inner core. Death Star levels of emotion started rising in me, was I that defenseless (and what next)? Then all went silent! For a good few minutes!
The gullible half of me relaxed. This small moment must have passed. Or flew off. Two, three minutes nothing. Then pain. My ear ached and my soul ached with distress! flip-flap, Flip-Flap, FLIP-FLAP, then a buzzing epiphany! I held my ear and ran inside.
I cork-screwed a Harris Teeter ‘Premium’ tissue into my ear canal. There was some regress from torment, the pain backed off. And upon extraction, some ear wax and hairs and blood. I’d been fed upon! A day that will blight the rest of my life...

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 13/03/2025

A Mouse Story open.substack.com/pub/cwpates/...

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