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Backspace Delete

22 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, backspace, boring, delete, family, grateful, keep going, pablum, pain, PC, politically correct, rage, Thanksgiving, writing

After much thought and personal debate because it’s been a long year of night I have decided to give thanks.  Everyone is giving thanks for something right around this day, right up until they pass the gravy. How could I resist thought, debate, and gravy? 

The “winner” of my thanks is three-fold:  The backspace bar, ctrl+backspace bar, and the delete button.  (Note the Oxford comma there?) 

This year (and I am not kidding) I am grateful for the ability to backspace or delete.  I would rather remain on a blank page with a blinking cursor tempting me to “go on… go on… you know you want to say it!” than saying it, the satanic cursor that wants me to puke out every last thing I think or feel and make it public with the push of a button! “Go on… do it… it’ll feel so good, it’ll be okay….”  So I took up the keyboard and wrote terrible things, damning things on long pages of Word documents or little tweets or other social media platforms that zoom past where we are always in danger of being pushed off into an oncoming train. I wrote missives and critiques and opinions no one asked for while dabbing lukewarm coffee I spilled on the tablecloth or sucking Chinese food sauce from my fingers and (allegedly) from the keyboard from which I write this thing, the letters “j” and “g” are sticking…. 

I am grateful to be able to scream to the holy high heavens that everything sucks and I hate everything, that I am a miserable piece of shit and nothing matters, but the backspace button gives me space to take it all back before you see it. It allows me to wail and whine and cuss and be so damnably politically incorrect. I get to be petulant, pedantic, sexist, racist, ageist, uniformed, uneducated, illiterate and worse–boring! 

You don’t get to see that I still hit the @ key when I meant !  and that’s because the blessed backspace button exists. You don’t get to see my exposed private parts that disclose rage and horror in favor of vanilla and pablum.  (Somebody who reads this might know where that came from.)  

So, thank you, backspace and delete for allowing me to tailor my thoughts and words to be delicate, kind, favorable always.  I guess it’s what I believe everyone needs.  Thank you for giving me space to scream and throw things and give you a piece of my mind and then deleting it all because the world doesn’t need another angry woman. How could that be helpful in any way? Thank you for helping me sort out tornado thoughts from surgical words and maybe that’s not the right thing after all, but today is a day for grateful, for sharing, for embracing those we love who we haven’t seen in a long time where we keep our real words in purses on the floor in the bedroom and we don’t open them until we get home and we weep.  

Thank you, backspace delete for helping me figure out why.  

Universe, Fingerpaints.

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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aliens, border, cars, children, dream, fingerpaints, fishing, Hoya, justice, life, music, ocean, peace, potted plant, questions, rain, son, sunrise, Universe, writing

I wake up at 0400, I don’t know why.

My Hoya plant climbs and changes direction all day, pushing out leaves that start out maroon then turn green, looking for something cling to, I guess, but I don’t know how. They don’t care why.

Somebody’s gorgeous, imperfect black Mercedes 350 D sits in the parking lot, and I don’t know who it belongs to. Should I do penance for coveting?

I had a dream and you were in it and I was awful to you. Should I apologize?

My son shivers under a pile of covers every few weeks and nobody knows how to fix him. When will we find the answer?

Who will tend our nerves and muscle, spine and hips, and tell them stand down, the money has come, go and get well, healthcare has come?

What does an unaching body feel like?

Where does music come from?

Why are those finger-sized fishes jumping out of the bay into the air?

Where did my pouch of flash drives go?

What will my next best writing look like, and who will tell me “Yes, we want this.”

Are you the one tapping on my window at night when it rains, sounding like somebody is dropping berries onto my windowsill from the roof in the middle of the night?

Who’s going to put all this stuff away, and wash laundry, and take the garbage out, and pay bills, and wash the car?

Does anyone else hate the fact that Greenie’s is gone and wonder what will replace that beach bar that the mayor said yeah that was nice but it’s time to move on?

How many children are still without their parents at the border and will they ever see them again?

Peace in our time?

Are aliens shunning us?

Who made the first fishing net?

I dunno.   It’s all just Universe painting, I guess.  Meanwhile….who can think with all this going on…  20180926_070410

(Turn, Turn, Turn)

29 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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birds, cicada, family, glass already broken, loss, mistakes, moon, pain, philosophy, season, Serenity prayer, the Byrds, Wheel, writing

I begin this morning that could feel like I’m sifting through a house fire, blackened, burned, sopping wet, heartbroken, but I am determined to hold my head up and say this is a new day, one I begin with raw skin and foal’s legs, and I will make something good of it.

I begin this morning clinging to a philosophy, one that says my favorite glass that sits on the shelf is already broken.

I begin this morning clinging to the serenity prayer that tells me to accept the things I cannot change.

I begin this morning better than I left yesterday. I was overwhelmed. I tore my house apart looking for something I’d lost. I cried. I still cry.  I slept, unable to face the everything that came down on me because it’s clearly gone.  One small loss drew in a lifetime of loss, like some magnet that attracts black matter, black star, black planet, a life implodes, and yet I still get to choose how to face this minute, and the next and the next.  I saw all your faces, I relived all your hearts and every mistake I ever made that hurt you and hurt me. I slept and I survived.

Things happen all around me and I didn’t always notice.  I’ve been trying to get better at observing and writing to understand.  When I was a kid we would visit our grandparents in the Garden State of New Jersey, land of the farms and high tension lines.  I used to collect cicada shells in those late summer days, carefully plucking their delicate bodies clamped to a tree and putting their husks in a coffee can. Quite a pile. They had a unique smell almost akin to ancient books in a back room library but with a whiff of life that is begone. Until recently, cicada always meant “summer sound, dormant, collect husks for fun.”  Once we brought a cicada home, kept it in an aquarium and watched as it broke through its old body and became wetly new, expanding, growing, alive, astonishing colors!   We put it on a pine outside when we knew it was time.  It never made a sound, and I never saw it fly away, yet what a gift we received that day.  Here, there are cicada who made their home in the pine tree across from my door.  They react to birds invading their branches, the cicada fly away (actually flying! away!) and come back when the bird is gone. The needles even shake when their heavy, black bodies depart!  And when they are comfortable, they sound like my dad’s radial arm saw, calling calling calling all summer day until dark.

I never knew cicada could be so proactive. Their large, black bodies are busy in ways I never saw before.  Meanwhile, I have to decide what is more important this morning: Life ever changing, words and images I lost yet I have the time and the place and the ability to write about everything, with everything I’ve got right now.  Cicada know it’s all on the table and it’s now or never. They give it their all.  And I don’t want to be a dried husk stuck to a pine tree with no story to tell.

Do cicada grieve? Do slow-motion butterflies who pass by the pines care?  I don’t know. All I know is that the finches will be back next year to make several noisy baby broods, gulls will patrol the shore for unfortunate fry, and the moon will be bright in my winter window.

My petal face is showing

18 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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blossom and grow, Choose, Christmas, edelweiss, family, friends, writing

Well, I could choose to ignore the fact that Christmas is coming and let the cards write themselves, let the gifts magically appear fully wrapped in my sleigh so all I have to do is show up… or I could choose to ignore the fact that Christmas is coming at all. Or, I could make way. Clear the decks. Prepare a space–a quiet space–and open the book of Christmas past. Time to open my address book and look on the names.

So many people that have moved once, twice, thrice. I know their children’s names, but not her grandchildren’s names. It’s a basic book, so I have to squeeze in birthdates, anniversaries, the day they died. So many spaces are blank, but I am slowly filling in the memories.  So many changes, people who’ve moved on with no forwarding address, and that’s okay. It’s like walking into a silent church, I can smell the incense, I see faces and remember my heart big in my chest at seeing you and you and you. I light a votive today as I write cards for friends and family whose paths have diverged. You are remembered with love and I always carry a light for you.

I have a rex begonia growing on my bedroom windowsill. It’s my first. I had to re-arrange the sill because the prayer plant will need her own apartment soon, she’s taking over the place. Rex begonia saw fit to rise up through the soil and create a space for a bloom, and she opened today, five tender pink petals.  Pink like the address book I’ve been carrying around all these years. My desk is clear. My right pinky is smeared in green ink from writing everything I needed to say, finally. Begonia tells me if she can bloom here then, hell, I can do anything.

Energy, Creative, Spent. On.

17 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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creativity, energy, fiction, furnace, home, politics, potted plant, reading, Shogun, silence, writing

I’ve heard it said that one should be careful what they put their energy into.  Perhaps you’ve seen the meme that cautions who you invite into your soul, or the reminder that Karma did, indeed, see what you did.  “Be careful what you put your energy into tonight, darling,” I think to myself as I write.  It doesn’t all have to be lofty and worthy, but is it worth the energy I believe it might?  Yes. No. Maybe.

The silence of this place is more precious to me than the clean water that patters into the steel sink. Why not use the cliche of more precious than gold? Because you know me better than that. Only my fingertips tapping and my eardrum’s tinnitus breaks the silence. Here comes a helicopter (helo) beating its way over this little spit of land, soon to cross the bay and RTB.  This helo sounds awful, one blade out of tune, I’ve never heard that before, and I wonder, and I wonder if my energy should care.

My plants are repotted. The floors smell of citrus. I dug this fuzzy sweater from the box that hides beneath my bed, baby blue that made me sweat when I took a little walk earlier this evening. Finding shelly treasures require extra scouting these days. All good use of my energy, but why should you care?

My little green oil burner fills this space with the scent of something vague but peaceful. It’s not the loud, spotlight-stealing scent of sage, or the typical pumpkin or vanilla stuff we’re “supposed” to be burning this time of year. I stare at the tea light flame and think of the advice I gave to a friend. She is struggling. So hard. She is a potted plant who hears a wild life calling in the distance. The energy I give her is not a waste of time. It’s just not the right time.  I spent a lot of time thinking about this and conclude that I respect the woman she is, the woman she chooses to be, because to do otherwise would be harmful to us both.

I have used a great deal of energy reading two books of political non-fiction. I pat myself on the back for reading out of my comfort zone, for finishing what I began though in places I wanted to throw them across the room, and for recognizing that I am ready to stop using my energy on this quest now. I sought wisdom, some kind of understanding for the politics of our day trying to make sense of it all. The books were good, but they left me feeling like a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.  Who knew maybe it was a bad idea to take a bite from the fruit of that tree? My furnace is ready to burn for better things now.

What I’ve produced in my recent writings are for personal use, so much sorting, so many questions and no wrong answers.  A good use of my energy, I believe.  I’m ready to turn back to writing fictions, pleasures, dragons, warriors, to create a world I can understand, a world where I’m not being held hostage by my government.  And I’m set to re-read “Shogun” because it’s been calling at me for quite some time.

PS: The refrigerator is running, breaking the silence, and that is just all right.

September 29 morning

29 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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morning, ocean, waves, writing

Well, it happened again.  I stumbled into the kitchen to slurp down lukewarm water from a coffee mug on my sink, eyes half-glued shut. I pulled on whatever clothes I could find and headed down to the beach, sunglasses and a flannel shirt in place because the sun is bright and the breeze is stiff.  Interesting that the breeze is not chilling, it’s “warm” according to some.  It’s the same beach where I got pounded by three guys who don’t see anything the way I do last night, and yet we all agreed the giant, orange sun taking refuge behind that house at the end of the spit was really fucking cool.

This morning I stood on the empty beach watching the USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship, heading down to Puerto Rico, post Maria, escorted by a destroyer whose name I do not know.  This morning I had cauldrons full of bullshit still boiling over from yesterday, or hell, last year. I had empty pots clanging from my belt loops making empty noise, but that one particular seagull really didn’t mind. He was busy scoping me out for danger or for food.

This morning I inspected the character of the beach, her new hill, post-Maria. I lament that I do not see many of my neighbors anymore, because. That’s all anyone needs to say is “because.” You don’t need to know why he stays home or she stays home now.

And it happened again, as I walked barefoot with brimming cauldron and empty pots clanging. I stopped moving. I became still and dumb and silent in body and mind because the waves mesmerize me.  Everything drops off,  the scales from my eyes, last night’s venting in person and to the silent four walls where I rehearse my protest speeches. It all drops off and blows away and I can’t do anything but stand there and listen and stare at the waves coming in and breathe the scent of clean ocean. Okay, and side-eye the gull because I know what he wants and I think he knows we’re at an impasse. Energy comes from somewhere out there and pushes the water in and it lifts up, foamy white heads that maintain, maintain, up, ope, starting to break down, down, break, a gentle crash and a retraction. Begin again. Again. I lose time because I get lost, and I cannot begin to speak my gratitude for it.

I like being held captive and silent by the waves, and all the things she does to me.

Amen.

When Reality Forces Our Hands

11 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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change, creativity, friends, Phil Ochs, prophecy, revolution, William Blake, writing

2017.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It’s a heady day of reflection and mourning the innocent and the heroes who ran to instead of away from.

Friends and writers (friends who are writers? writing friends? oh hell, people who mean a great deal to me) have shared some thoughts with me today.  One sent me the lyrics to a Phil Ochs song. Another shared the story of the antichrist written by a man who “switched faiths” from Anglican to Catholic.  The deeper I delve into who these people are, seeking context, discovering who they might have been at the time they wrote what no one could ever stop from coming into being, creative hands that needed to sing their worldviews to the rooftops, the more tired I become.

Passion requires energy from those who create it and those who are drawn to the light. Tired dreamers are not comatose, they arise, awake, and continue to splatter pages with the truth as they see it, and with hope that someone will hear their hearts shouting and make a change.

The deeper I delve into context I am rewarded with new thoughts and more places to go, stimulated, but I also feel another stone in my pocket. Sorrow for their pain. Wonder. Hope for my own flagging pen, life, and world. I, like them, will write this world into a world that makes sense, one that is loving, brimming with hope and love and fullness!

It all leads me back to William Blake. I will imbibe him for the remainder of the day.  He was an artist and prophet, and I believe his traumas and empathy was stretched to breaking. It is part of what brought him to design and create a personal mythology, one that he had to share, could not not share, as one whose oxygen mask is on goes running into the crowd asking everyone, “Come! Partake!”

We are forced to write, to create, when the world is not behaving the way we see fit. It’s the only way we can make sense of it. We cannot remain silent. It goes against the creative nature.  Long may it remain so.

Committing The Rare Feel-Good To The World

10 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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dog, fight, grateful, happy, journal, naked, ocean, truth, writing

Writing, committing thought and wonder, questions and desire, hope, longing, confession and manifesto leaves one naked. You are naked when you write, and if you’re afraid to let the world see every lovely ugly, then the “enter” key should not be allowed. Hold fast your pen, keep your files hidden. Wait until you’re ready to slam it all down, unlock your door, let the stranger in to see you emerge from your bath, wet, bloody, home, and real.

I’m not writing so the stranger can rate me on some fixed scale like exhausted figure skaters or boxers who throw their fights walking away with millions.  I’m not writing for your approval or to raise eyebrows or cause trouble or to make history.  I am writing because, as a wise man said what seems so long ago, I can’t not write. It’s a driven and it’s a given that I will have pen juice on my fingers, that I stare long and lovingly at journals in the bookstore and have a hard time not buying binders and loose-leaf like some kind of kid going back to school. I love the smell of pen and ink and this laptop hardly creates the same kind of vibe, but that’s all right.

September has come and somebody turned the cicada’s song switch off: their voices are gone. The north wind brings a scent of flowers which I cannot explain. A hurricane comes and I am tired of figuring out which way to run. I colored my hair and bathed late, very late last night, and I wonder if my neighbors heard the water running.  My hair is clean and smooth and fragrant. I woke smelling its scent on my pillow feeling more content, happy, and pleased than I have in a long time. The moon is full and bright in my bedroom window again, which tells me what season we are in. I slept with the windows open beneath piles of covers so I can be warm and still hear the wind in the trees. I think your name and I can smile and write it in the sand, I can even allow you in my bed as I coax sleep once more, instead of fighting, fighting, fighting you, waking feeling like every little thing’s gonna be all right.

This morning’s beach is scoured clean by north/northeast winds, maybe 10 knots. Small, round rocks perfect for skimming peek out from the sand and I see no crab burrows.  A large, dead fish. It looks like something began to devour him and spat him back out, leaving his body on shore. Why?  A dead turtle, a kind I do not recognize, his small clawed limbs point southwest. I am sorry he died and hope it wasn’t because of plastic.  A black dog running wild on the beach that for some reason, no reason, for lack of anything I can explain, I do not trust him. Sea glass seems extinct since the beach restoration, but I found a little bit of blue and white ceramic that I put in my pocket.  On the final few feet back to my trail, I found a piece of shell the size of two fingers. She is deep blush-colored on the outside, and mother-of-pearl within, and she looks like how I feel when I hear his name.

I feel alive and well and ready to write. I feel grateful for everything that brought me here, what good, bad, strange, and otherwise. Time to commit the rest to paper and ink.

A.S.M.

27 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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tattoo, waiting, writing

I am writing

I have written

I wear cathedrals of stained glass in my eyes and heart

chiseled stone from rock that comes hundreds of miles away

made of hands none of us know.

I wear those stains on my skin and plan to wear more.

I sit beside ghosts, waiting for the word

I am waiting for the word.

Someday, I will be my own cornerstone.

Transition In The Key Of Me

05 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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friends, Iron Maiden, September, sorting, transition, work, writing

The year many of our beach dogs died. The year humans reclaimed the beach from weather, tacking on 20 feet and taking away sandbars. The year of travel. Of making friends. Reclaiming silence, peace, writing, reading. Self.

September is coming. It begins my season of change. The world celebrates New Year’s as the new, like one big, happy, unbloody period, but September always felt like the real chapter for me. I feel September coming as I sort the ingredients of last year. So many sleepless nights. So many sunrise and sunsets. Countless wave sounds to catalog with mere words. Empty shells and sea glass have become homes for hermit crabs and the sea glass is rarer now. Great herds of seaweed would beach themselves and reek on the shore until they dried out to become part of the sand, but not now.  I know the wind now. I understand the lightning a little more. I am free with the truth because I have nothing to lose.  I write. I will always write. I have a vision to build a body of work so that I can publish something with some meat on the bones, something people will like at least, or remember, at most.

I think back on those times I left home to see Iron Maiden and friends for a few days. There was a plan for a meetup. A hotel. Sightseeing for a little while. A tavern for dinner, a hole in the wall for the tribute band to play the night before. Attending the concert which was a holy thing. Hugs and love and the return home. I always felt like I needed to straighten up the house before I left. I guess I felt like if I left things in disarray while I was out having a good time it would weigh on me.  And now, as I approach September, I see I’ve done it again: my home is in top shape. I gathered books, CDs, clothes for donating. I trashed things that I was holding on to that was time to let go. Hand-washed a pile of delicate blouses. Everything in its place, keeping only those things that matter, shedding all the rest because I have to prepare for the next chapter.

My neighbor is distraught that I am seeking employment. She appreciates my presence and likes that if she asks I will go with her to grab coffee or new lawn chairs or simply listen whenever she needs. I reassured her that I’ll still be around, but I felt the seismic shift in her when I said I’m going back to work. That’s all right. She will figure things out and get used to it, just like I’ll have to get used to wearing bras and socks and shoes again.

These next two days will be interesting. I wonder what I will do with my silence, my time. All I know is that my house smells like coconut, courtesy of the wax burner. Neighbors are chatting, coffee mugs in hand, fluffy white dogs in laps in the the newly-constructed bench in the courtyard. That wasn’t there last year, m’dear. I will contemplate a wasp sting, a child’s graduating, a man’s love, another man’s spirit, books that make me breathless and books that make me wonder how did this get published, sniffing out the trail of a new tattoo, and reorganizing my energy for a new path, the next path.

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