She flipped through the channels, dissatisfied with everything she watched in the three seconds she took to assess the screen. It was sticky hot and it was 10 p.m. She had two fans going and her bedroom window was open about five inches. It was all it could go. She had hammered nails into all the window sashes to ensure that they could only be opened so far by an intruder. Even so, it still made her uneasy, sometimes, to have the window open.

She heard the rustle outside again. Odd, since there was absolutely no wind and hadn’t been any for the last two days. Maybe it was a neighbor’s pet going through the bushes. Again, odd, she thought, as it was 10 p.m. and she knew her neighbors to have their animals in well before then. It was a coyote neighborhood. Pets weren’t safe outside any time and especially at night.

She ignored the rustle and continued flipping through the channels.

“For God’s Sake! Just watch anything!!”

Her breath caught for a second then she let out a scream heard across two streets. Lights went on.

“Oh jeez! Now ya done it!”

She screamed again.

“OH MY GOD! SHUT THE FUCK UP! ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS WATCH TV!”

With this, her mind jumbled. Seriously, what the fuck?

“SERIOUSLY!!!! WHAT THE FUCK???” she yelled. 

“Dude! I’m homeless! I just wanted to pretend I have a TV for a little while. I was just hanging out, leaning on this bush. Why did you have to fuck it up? Shit! The cops are gonna come! Half the neighborhood is awake, now!”

“I’m sorry!” It flitted through her thoughts how ridiculous it was she was apologizing to him, when he was the TV peeping tom.

A minute of quiet and then, “Naw. I’m sorry. I scared the crap out of you. I sort of forgot myself.”

“It’s okay.” Again, the ridiculousness of comforting the offender made her thinking feel a bit wonky.

The phone rang and it was her neighbor. She assured them she was okay and had been startled by a movie. She apologized several times for scaring them. Their lights went off and, soon, the lights at a couple of other houses did, too.

“I suppose it’s okay if you stay, BUT, I’m not watching just anything. You shut up or move on.”

Another minute of quiet and then, “Deal! Thanks!” She ignored the slurp of liquid that followed.

©2017 E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Strength is forged by the fires of struggle.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

This is what it looks like to me:

I, being of brown skin with the ability to speak a second language, am not welcome in what has been, for at least part of my heritage, the only home I've known (Indigenous).

I, being of brown skin with the ability to speak a second language, am not welcome in what has been, for at least part of my heritage, the home I've known since 1500. Yuppers, England and the rest of Europe were scrambling to get to the 'new world' while the Spaniards were already invading.

Up the Coast

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Bonita & the Secret

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Everything happens for a reason. It's called our thought processes.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Fall Harvest

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E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed,

but nature does not depend on us.

We are not the only experiment.

R. Buckminster Fuller

 Bonita & the Professor

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What backstories do we tell ourselves daily? Let's mind our backstories. They produce our future front line.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Blessed and astute are those who can find art and joy in the menial, thereby transforming it into the extraordinary.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Bonita & the Grand Canyon

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My breasts do not diminish my natural intelligence nor my self-inflicted education, unlike how viewing said breasts seems to diminish the male psyche.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

The Treehouse

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Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself,

in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.

In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest

in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there.

Hermann Hesse

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start,

anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.

Carl Bard

 Bonita Bus

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Collective consciousness: we are capable of

turning any tide.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going

but I'm on my way.

Carl Sandburg

Live, so you do not have to look back and say: 'God, how I have wasted my life.'

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones,

and good in everything.

William Shakespeare

We can remember that thought is controllable. We can learn to consciously view time as the only real currency we own.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Never put off till tomorrow, the book you can read today.

Holbrook Jackson

Happenstances and Other Vignettes

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Emotions are not predicated by others' actions but by perception. Choose your perception and illicit your emotion.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Within our minutes, days, years, lives, we can choose to focus on what is missing or what is available. We can then choose how to feel about either one. If there is a perception of something missing, we can be hopeful that there is something to fill the gap or frustrated that the component is not there. If the perception is of having something available, we can choose to feel grateful about the abundance or frustrated that it's not enough. We choose

all the levels of sentience and attitude about our

minutes, days, years, lives.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

I have found that if you love life, life will

love you back.

Arthur Rubinstein

Thought is deed. It has ramifications, a reaction, a result. Affirm thought through physical deed but do not underestimate

the power of thought.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

E. B. White

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy

for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

Sholom Aleichem

the farm

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Happiness: a decision to feel and express gratitude while appreciating beauty in all things.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

Mark Twain

Life isn't about finding yourself.

Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

What is willed into being, can be willed away.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Happenstances and Other Vignettes

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Change the course of your life, swim downstream.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

If people woke up thinking today could be there last day, it would probably be the best day in their lives.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Fear. Perceived loss of power is fear. Perceived loss of territory is fear. Perceived loss of 'standing' (aka ego) is fear. The basis of anger is fear. The basis of depression is anger which is fear. Fear. The root of so much that is wrong with this world.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Mama Na (Spanish)

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The law of attraction is really the law of reflective resonance. Universe absorbs your resonance

and reflects back the people and situations

you resonate.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

Too many don't understand that minutes are gone once lived.

They falsely believe those minutes are repeated.

E. Rodriguez y Nogueras

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Mark Twain

Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

Rumi

Issues of Privacy

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I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.

Jack Handey