One thing my dad left in this world for me as a part of him is a cylinder. It looks like it is made of wood, but it is not wood. It’s two circle slabs molded together one on top of the other like a little top hat that’s solid. It’s dark, glossy, and grainy, and gives off a dull glow. It really has no smell I can discern, and it’s about one foot round and a foot tall and has some weight. It would be an awkward throw, but you could toss it through a window, no problem.

He told me it’s a blivet, and he told a group of my uncles all about the blivet one evening sitting around Uncle Bill’s dining room table. They were sippin’ whiskey, I suppose, if one supposes that one can actually “sip” whiskey. And my old man was telling tales.

He said he found the blivet on a jungle foray in Taiwan. It was in the forest trapped in a deepening grave in the jungle floor. He said it had a glow about it and it drew his eyes in the dark jungle he was hiking in, taking pictures and dodging snakes. It was partially covered with the forest floor, the dirt and plant life encroaching on every still thing, but it was peeking up a couple of inches beckoning him. He touched it and it glowed brighter, he said.

He took the healthy glow as a message to dig the object out and let it breathe. He said he found a handy stick and carefully dug around the sides. He said he had a “feeling” that the object was happy to be dug out of its anchor. It glowed even louder as he unearthed it. When he finally released the cylinder and brushed off the dirt and plant slime, it grew less weighty in his hands to almost a whisper and emitted light enough to light up the little clearing he was in. He was surprised with the intensity of the light; he could look up and see the tops of the tree canopy all around him, and it lit the leaves and the vines hanging all around him.

He said it was like a “godly” experience. Now, many of you don’t know my dad, but if you did, you’d know there was no god-like figure in his world, never was. Though he may have plenty of religion now, from the other side. He knew in his heart the object was a “blivet.” And it was, as the legend says, one of six that were left here by flyby aliens before the last Ice Age. And they hold the secrets of the universe between them. Everything. If it can be decoded it would solve every problem ever known to humankind, earthkind, and alienkind. But one needs all six plus a key to open the secret.

The blivet I have has been in my family since 1971 or so. For a while, it was passed around to various family members where it would stay for a while and then be passed on again. The plan was to have everyone write about their experience and life while the blivet was “theirs.” Not sure anyone ever wrote anything about it, I think maybe I remember Uncle Bob wrote up something, probably not serious and may have been written while “sippin.'” But it wound up back with me and here it will stay until it goes. I’m not looking for the other five blivets or the key. If I could solve all of the universe, I don’t know if I’d rise to the task. That job sounds like a mighty twisty turny road with dim lights and bald tires.

So it sits on my dresser. It never gets dusty, it lights my room with a dull warm glow at night, and it never turns off. It’s like a heartbeat. I tried to take a picture of it to include in this tale. but after six shots with two different cell phone cameras, there is not a single frame that shows anything, it just a blank black reflection of nothing. But if you’re ever at my house, I’ll gladly show it to you and let you hold it.