Tag Archives: destiny

Feb 14

15 Wednesday Feb 2017

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Tonight I would like to shout out to my MIL who sounds so good, who   had such interesting stories (including the psychedelia) about her surgery.  I love her,  am proud of her, and glad she’s doing so well.

Tonight I shout out to friends and neighbors who sent cards to make MIL feel good while she recovered.  The world needs more kind, loving, recuperative words.

Tonight I acknowledge the poison pen of me who wants to write angry things, things that suggest no antidote to the politics of the day.  I hear you, I write you, but I’ll not share  you just yet.  You are authentic, I stand up against you, but wait.  Wait.  Assimilate. And then let loose.

Tonight I acknowledge my wax plant who picked up where he left off and proceeds to take over the window ledge, leaves, shoots, and more leaves, more power to you! I am ecstatic that you have come back to life!

Tonight I try to assimilate a story about the 845. Their story shares the one that I live in. So many shootings, so many senseless deaths. I can choose to throw the towel in, or I can choose to fight for making the world a better place, grassroots on up. Don’t give up! I want so much to make the hurting stop, both here in VA and in NY.  I love them both.  But love seems to mean so little, my heart hurts because I can’t fix it for all of you with a flip of the switch.   Universe, please help us.

Tonight I think about the squirrel who side-eyed me face to face, he on the brick ledge and me inside.  I watched him today excavating tree limbs, hopping, resting, staring. I was so surprised when he came across my ledge while I was on the phone with MIL, but I watched him, wondering what next, fascinated.  Spring is coming.

I came here last year alone. Everything I needed at the time I unloaded from my car and slept alone, a long, body-tired sleep.  Two days later, a terrible fire rose and ate families from their homes on the coldest night of the year for this area, full of toothy wind.  Those firefighters.  Tonight I think about that small inferno, wind unrelenting, fire spreading, and what does that look like for survivors and first responders, the persons who helped people and their pets relocate? It’s been a year and it’s not all back to normal.  I think tonight about Mike who listened to me while I cowered in a freezing, dark car, afraid my apartment was next to be eaten. I had no right to ask him to be kind to me, but he was.

Feb 14 is Butch’s birthday.  Enter ghosts. Enter pleas. Enter memories.

Thoughts On This September Day

11 Friday Sep 2015

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Good morning.  I sleep better after he leaves for work, so I returned to sweet (illicit) dreams, but then awoke to remembering what today is.  And my exhausted son overslept, but he got himself out the door.   The morning began a little sideways, but perhaps today is the right day to feel sideways. Tilted. On unfirm footing.

Nothing is certain right now, for me anyway, and my Jyotish horoscope certainly agrees with how this feels.   You might say, “What? Oh come on, you don’t believe that crap do you?” And I will say “Yes. I do believe that the carbon-based units (thank you Star Trek) on this planet are influenced by our genes, our ancestors, our birth order, and where this planet is in relation to the rest of the Universe. We are certainly influenced by things outside our control, and I look at horoscopes with interest, but not for hard and fast truths. Sometimes it coincides with my life, sometimes not. In the end, it’s all up to me.”

This September day is overcast.  The sky is not turquoise like it was on that day, fourteen years ago. I remember walking outside to see if there were any planes flying at all, after I heard the news.  We might get more rain today. I sure would like to stay home and write in the pouring rain, but I will probably be at the store slinging auto parts when the rain falls. I shooed away the wee temptation to skip work and stay home to write, but I am closing the store tonight and that means be there, or else.

I am tempted to clean out my closet and office because it will be productive, and yet have nothing to do with writing. I come up with all kinds of things to take me off track and it’s an illness many creatives suffer.  I recognize it, name it, and now I will put a stop to it by saying I have a writing goal for next week, September 22nd, to submit both pieces of recent flash fiction.  I’ve already dealt with a tardy teenager, read the news, journaled, and stated a goal.  And now, we’re off.

Face the morning. Breathe. Reflect. Love. Seek the horizon.

9/14 update:  Submitted piece today.  Yay!

Here There Be Dragons

11 Friday Sep 2015

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Somehow, I can manage to think now. I can look for truth, allow it in.  Somehow, now, I can look forward and know it’s ok to be afraid.  And today I wrote. I finished the story of Bonewitch and I am very happy with the way it came out.  Tonight I discovered that every thing I write won’t be the last thing I write. There’s more, there will be plenty more to come if I keep at it.  If I can open my heart/mind/soul and let beauty, peace, and joy come in.

This morning I had the idea that I will do something I fear because I am ready for it now. Well, I am open to the idea of it, and ready to consider the fear and what it means to me.  I am ready to leave sight of land. I want to sail East, away from here, instead of South alongside land.

Today I decided not to wait for someone to ask me things. I will be the hunter instead, and perhaps I will fail. I’ll get a negatory and will have to move on, and that is just fine with me. It’s better than waiting and not knowing. I’m tired of waiting and not knowing.

The mappa says “Here there be dragons.” This morning I recognized I am afraid to swim with them because they will eat me, but now I am ready to consider that fear and write about them. How else can I join them in their weightless wonder?  164726__storm-in-the-sea_p

Heading, Captain?

31 Monday Aug 2015

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Had the opportunity and pleasure of attending the New York Airshow at Stewart International Airport yesterday, family in tow.  We had a great afternoon, and let’s face it, folks. An airshow isn’t an airshow unless you’ve been out in the sun for four hours. There is little shade on an airport runway unless you are one of the lucky folks who’s family member is a serviceman and can sit beneath the wing of a C-17.  If you forgot your sunscreen and plenty of water, then you’ve forgotten what it means to spend a long time outdoors. But I digress…

Being in the company of those Marines and Airmen brought so many things back to me, the foremost was deep thanks for what they do, day in and day out, unseen, unknown, and forgotten when our government runs out of cash. The little wanna-be Marine in me wanted to thank each and every one of them personally for their service.  My grateful words will be largely unseen here, but it’s all I have at the moment.

Something else it brought back to me was what would my life look like today if I joined the Corps back when I was young, unmarried and pre-child?  Would I have lived a life fulfilled? The life I dreamt of the first time I saw a squad of Warthogs fly overhead, then dreamed about marching in formation beneath their screaming engines?  Would I have been happy becoming the lean, mean, killing machine I wanted to be, back in those days?  Would I have kept on writing? Would my creativity have survived and still meant something to me after my tour was done?  There is no way for me to know what would have been, and that goes for every aspect of my life, which I’m not going to examine in detail here. That’s not what this place is for.  All I know is what is “now.”  Here and now. What I choose to create or what I choose to procrastinate and run away from every day.  The choice is mine, each and every hour, all those hours between daily life, chores, the mundane, the “day job”, the mid-life.  What will I choose to create, and what will I choose to throw away, forsake, ignore, run away from?

If the answer does not manifest more writing (and not the blog stuff and the email stuff, I mean actual conjuring of a story or poem that wasn’t there a minute ago), then I either have to change the answer or live with the consequence. And no whining!  There’s no place for whiners in the Corps, or in the world of art.