God’S Houseplants: ...Beyond the Window

By Sahara Sutter

Gods HouseplantsBeyond the Window by Sahara Sutter is an adult intellectual fairy tale about discovery and hope beyond the propaganda of happily ever after.

Cindy Peterson has been on a 50-year plus personal journey. She still knows little of her past other than hers is likely an unintended life that lacks any sense of family. Ultimately, she comes to terms with being a forgotten child left at the doorstep of the wrong planet when disenchanted childhood tales and a regimented adult life abruptly collide with an altered dimension of evidence-based reality. Her decades long trek to nowhere guide her to lives of poignant connections and adventure beyond the narrow view of those confined on a lonely rock called Earth.

It is where home is not a place but a contentment of the soul and time is quite a malleable thing after all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532020285

Sahara Sutter

Sahara Sutter has a doctorate in health science and is a University Professor. She admires the remarkable journeys through everyday life among the unsung heroes who change the world for others daily. Perhaps, the childhood fairy tales are stories of spiritual beings in human form after all.

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Copyright © 2017 Barbara Duffy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Photo Credits: Dario Boriani

His work can be found online on Alamy (www.alamy.com) and Fine Art America (www.pixels.com). He can also be contacted through

[e-mail] All images © 2017 Dario Boriani. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-2027-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2028-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017906101

iUniverse rev. date: 06/30/2017

Contents

Without Beginning

Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – Elton John

Forever Young – Bob Dylan

Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen

Just My Imagination – The Temptations

Me and Bobby McGee – Janis Joplin

A Day in the Life - Beatles

Make Your Own Kind of Music – Cass Elliot

You Are the Sunshine of my Life – Stevie Wonder

Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding

Over the River and Through the Wood - Lydia Maria Child

All My Life’s a Circle – Harry Chapin

The Fairy Tale was merely propaganda …

By the time she was middle aged, Cindy Peterson was resigned to being terminally lost. Without family anywhere on the planet, she accepted hers was an unintended life and lacked a sense of belonging, direction, or place to call home. While taking refuge in a successful healthcare career, her days were nonetheless, filled with the hollow echo of empty. Despite still wanting to believe in the fairy tales of her youth, she had long ago concluded there was no happily ever after.

Until one evening …

Her regimented reality clashes abruptly with imagination when she is visited by someone quite unexpected. It is an image of youth and confidence and appears to hold tight to all the hopes and dreams Cindy abandoned decades ago. From there, her journey further tests her professional conviction in science when a chance encounter with a healthcare prodigy introduces her to people living on hope. Together they venture beyond the view from the narrow window on the world, and mend the neglected lives of those stranded on a lonely rock called Earth.

… some people are best defined as God’s houseplants. They are granted the right to live a secondary and restricted existence … and when provided the proper attention, bloom into fascinating and grateful individuals.

To S.R.

Without Beginning

I suppose it’s unusual to start anything in the middle. But, the truth is this story had no beginning for fifty-plus years. While some may find this difficult to understand, I’d argue starting in the middle makes the most sense. None of us knows our ending and today may indeed be the beginning of a path to something extraordinary.

At any rate, what little I knew of my younger years consisted of unsung heroes and endless hard work in a dirt-colored existence. These champions of the unappreciated endured hardship, longed for salvation in faraway imaginary places, and with the help of a bit of unexplained magic, expected to be granted their wish. Likewise, for many of my formative years, I whole-heartedly believed in my fantasy right of being valued for my efforts and likewise living happily ever after.

So, I worked hard in the corporate world. I allowed deadlines to invade my sleep and chase away my dreams into dark recesses as others claimed every shred of joy for themselves. Later, I came to realize there was no rainbow to call my own. Magic does not come as a reward for the sacrifice of sleepless nights and loneliness. It was all just another fairy tale after all.

Furthermore, growing up without any family influence left me feeling as if I had been absent-mindedly left behind in the wrong place or time. I was a guest intruder needing too much attention from the coerced kindness of many others. My dreams, aspirations and the intangible dimension of emotion eventually landed in a discarded pile long ago to lighten the load between the temporary stops through a childhood and on the way to nowhere in particular.

Now, as a fully functional and responsible adult, unencumbered by the whimsical misdirection of youth, and with ample analytical wits, my adventure to tie the past and future together begins armed with one, at least somewhat realistic, directive.

Have no fear; allow no guilt; and immerse your soul in the music only you hear.

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A bend in the creek - by D. Boriani

Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac

Why in the world does anyone need so many days? I cannot remember (perhaps thankfully) one one-hundredths of them. It’s the same feeling as getting lost in the endless array of stars above. After all, like endless days, stars just exist and do not ask why or bother trying to be anything other than what they are. Their only purpose seems to be to amuse the residents stranded on a lonely rock called Earth in some obscure corner of magnificent awesomeness.

Those where my thoughts when I met her. One night she appeared - apparently out of nothingness - right here in my living room while I was sitting on my functionally generic Ikea couch with matching side table and during the third quarter of the Indianapolis versus Houston Monday night football game. Everything was poetic and simultaneously bizarre as I questioned my sanity in the light of this glowing image. I found myself enjoying the spectacle too much to pursue the logic hiding behind it. Which was an odd thing. Despite readily determining this was likely a hallucination, I decidedly preferred that new order of existence to my present preconceived definition of generic reality.

Perhaps a parallel universe of fantasy was only a thought away - something that has always existed nearby - similar to the sound only dogs can hear. The meager remnants of my former rebellious self reappeared to say, What the hell, go with it.

However, I remained with an intriguing mystery. Who is this person? How did she get into my house? Where does she come from? What was the sense of awe that she transmitted into my brain without effort? And why, why, why was she here?

As I sat there mesmerized, I lost all concern for how I must have looked. It was if my entire essence had been consumed by this being. She was beautiful, young, confident, and floating – and blocking my view of the televised football game. None of which I questioned at the time. Furthermore, there were what appeared to be dozens of fireflies circling her in random orbits of gleeful merriment. Her movements flowed with gentle grace as a tender breeze played in her curled dark tresses. She was totally unlike my disciplined self, yet I could not help thinking she represented a part of me that had been in a coma for so many years. Deep within her soft hazel eyes was an endless creative child of the ages. She was the wisdom of wonder with an amusing disregard for the productivity models of corporate human bondage.

I’d never seen anything like her before, but I also recognized an instantaneous biological compatibility perhaps only felt by clones or identical twins. Maybe, she was a compilation of all my discarded dreams. Maybe, she lived at the edge of slumber before reality takes shape and thoughts are given a free rein to roam endlessly throughout all time.

Perhaps this image of embodied freedom before me was someone I should know well. If I did not know her well, I planned to become her best friend. Because without a doubt, this image had come home after a long journey where most thought she had died while others questioned if she ever existed at all.

As for me, there was no question. As the Indianapolis Colts trampled the Houston Texans into the turf on my widescreen TV, a gaggle of fireflies hummed a beguiling rendition of Fly Me to the Moon. I realized that I had indeed just encountered a product of some wayward DNA that had gone missing from myself long ago.

It isn’t every day you meet a part of yourself that you lived without for so long. Of course, there is no remote justice in the fact that the young, beautiful, confident, serene parts were all blown off the soul together by some cataclysmic maladjusted mayhem. Or perhaps it is that people only tend to see what they want to see. That might hold some justification if it were not for the fact that this entire event was indeed witnessed by others. Granted, the others in this case, were of a feline variety and not prone to engaging in coherent, verbal conversation. Without opposable thumbs, they couldn’t even to contribute by way of taking pictures, asking for autographs, or calling the local newspaper to set up an interview with the invading image.

Then there comes the dilemma of what to say to your assumed wayward relative self after decades of abandonment and disregard. I was quite conflicted and considered everything from igniting a flamethrower to surrendering to her presence. After an immeasurable amount of time - time without meaning or structure - the original questions returned. Who is this person? How did she get here? Where did she come from? How is she communicating to me without words and most importantly, why is she here and why now?

Surely, I must be caught in that formless abyss between sleep and wakefulness. The abyss must have given birth to a fictional phantom of my fairy tale self, or perhaps my daughter. Without a doubt, it was well past my usual bedtime.

Blinding light assaulted my previously closed and non-responsive eyelids. I opened my eyes to find the sun well on its way into the morning and two of my four hungry cats intently staring at me in hungered anticipation.

I had absolutely been working too hard. The image of the strange apparition of the previous night must have been a mental fabrication. Maybe, it was a bit of wishful thinking from someone who chronically overdoses on a Spartan reality. Nonetheless, it made for an interesting dream and maybe someday a stimulus-deprived person would write it into a work of fiction. Anyway, now that I was awake, I could remember what must have been its genesis in a fanciful advertisement I wrote years ago:

Position wanted –

Goddess of the universe to:

- Grace sparkling sands of isolated beaches,

- Soar amid tropical breezes upon an unbridled Spirit,

- Caress gentle sunbeams of glowing contentment,

- And echo a melody of enchantment forever.

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Beauty and the sea - by D. Boriani

I thought it would not be a bad job to have and one she certainly seemed tailor-made to accomplish.

Whatever the explanation, the event of the previous evening was thankfully quite tame when compared to my reoccurring grand momma of trauma and drama night time episodes. In that series I always find I am a child and alone in a busy airport terminal. I am surrounded by unknown people quickly dashing all about to their destinations. I have no clue why I am there. No one seems to see me. I feel as if I could stand right here for days without being noticed.

Finally, I grow tired of the neglect and I pull a fire alarm to demand some attention. I am here, I announce in a child’s voice. Can someone please help me?

Where are you going? a faceless overhead speaker responds.

I stare out the window and say, I don’t know.

Where are you going? The overhead speaker repeats.

I provide my best answer. Nowhere. I guess, I mumble.

Where are you coming from?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

At this point, I am sobbing in my sleep.

Then, I cannot help you, the speaker announces before it turns off with a click of finality.

This is when I awake in a full panic attack.

Not being a stranger to disturbing dreams, I mentally filed the previous night’s apparition into an obscure folder beneath forgotten fantasies with no future in a remote mostly forgotten corner of my brain. Then I got up to feed the cats. By this time in the morning, thoughts of cannibalism were becoming foremost in their little minds. They were staring at my slumbering body wondering how long before they would be justified in pounce upon their human without mercy.

What was left of the morning was indeed bright and beautiful. Most of the birds had long since given up on their daily morning chattering. But a cacophony of other yammering animals and lawnmowers joined a completely ignored alarm clock that had been demanding my response for the past two and a half hours.

What a way to start a day. It is not every day I have the opportunity to sleep through an interesting dream let alone wake up without the rude and intrusive call of a sadistic alarm clock. It was a beautiful day. The sky was a clear blue with the sheerest white gossamer scarf splayed across the zenith. The view was dotted with birds drifting in gentle, lazy loops. Vibrant color dappled the scene as a crisp October breeze entered through my bedroom window.

In short, it was too glorious a day to be sacrificed for the betterment of ungrateful others. Not to mention, how in the world would I explain the tardiness? Certainly, there was no way I could discuss virtual visitor (now officially categorized as a dream) of the past evening with anyone. Some things are just beyond the comprehension of others and are best left unshared.

Besides, I am not sure which is worse, the fear of exploring new dimensions or the discomfort of others’ close-mindedness. Perhaps this is a common concern among those diagnosed (and perhaps incorrectly so) with a litany of mental illnesses.

So, I decided that begging forgiveness outweighed asking permission and borrowed from a past truth. I called into the