Malice and mischief should never be conflated.

Whereas one is a delightful expression of childlike or perhaps, at times, childish, foolery. The other, without a doubt, is action with intention to harm.

I woke this morning with a bit of a jolt!

Ah, tingles! What is this? This I have missed.

Dressed in lace and my longest socks, I proceeded to my little pour-over station to make my morning coffee, listen to a bit of NPR, and plan my day.

Some dream scrap capturing, a laborious yard mowing (I use a hand-pushed one, no gas), and a bit of tidying later, I decided to go into the world to see what mischief I might find—or make!

As I wandered about my neighborhood—cider sloshing gleefully in my belly, the cat lost to the tortures of the local magpies—I couldn't help but pause to notice, inhale, and then pluck a few of the neighbor's blooms.

I knew I was going to do it before I did. It was purely pre-meditated. And I'm not in the least bit sorry!

As I left my own little circle of trailers and meandered out towards the main road, I took note of the tree dripping with pink blossoms and thought to myself, "You shall be mine!"

Of course pulling up an entire tree would be a Herculean feat that not even my little cider-sodden brain would attempt, no matter how small, and this one is well-matured. However, snapping a few branches, inconspicuously, is well within my scope of mischief. Had I been busted in the act of liberating the blossom-laden branches from their mother's trunk I simply would have said:

"It's okay! I asked the tree." (Waved like a lunatic and carried on my way!)

As it were, a rather cracked-out looking couple happened to pass by instead, generously extending me a grin punctuated by missing teeth or what is fondly known as: meth mouth. But they waved and I waved and I shrugged as I pulled the branches from the tree.

"What? Huh? Oh, hi! "

And they (with the Jack-O-Lantern grins), just kept on moseying.

So, once upon a time many, many, many moons ago I knew some meth-heads of my own. And well, they got into some real mishchief. Could it be construed as malice? Well, there was no intention to cause physical hurt... so hmmm.

Morally this is a bit ambiguous unless you are a hard-fast adherent of the tenth commandment: Thou shalt not steal! If you follow that strictly, or the law, then I suppose breaking and entering with the intention to alleviate someone of their valuables does, in fact, fall under the category of malicious behavior.

All of this passed through my mind as I liberated my blossoms from said tree, and proceeded to carry them home where I have now spent the afternoon making the most delicious flower arrangements, shopping for kimonos, listening to the rain patter across the tin roof of my cottage's covered porch whilst writing and, natually, drinknig cider.

There is an erotic innocence in the (stolen!) blossom-scented rain. And I revel in it and the fact that I have accomplished what I set out to do today. And by that I do not mean acquiring a rather sweet buzz and consuming half a bar of cherry-almond dark chocolate.

I wrote! I made my life a kiss more lovely. And I made some mischief.

And to you, dear reader, I will ask: What are some ways that you like to get into mischief?

Thanks ever-so-much for reading!

I'm in my 30 day blawg commitment and if you care to encourage me you can do so with comments, which literally feed my writer's heart or a subscription, if so inspired.

Lotsa love,

~Justice