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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Who Will Be Your Baby's Daddy?

My daughter is seventeen and is making some questionable choices about boys she likes. I thought of something new to explain to her today as I was thinking about it for a long time: choose a guy to date based on whether you think he would make a good father to your children. It may sound old-fashioned or weird, but what's wrong with using this standard to measure potential dates by? If teenagers did use this standard, maybe they would think before they act. Actually, you don't have to be a teenager to use this standard. Women of all ages get pregnant and have children, so maybe if we all thought this way fewer children would be born into homes with no decent father. My daughter basically grew up without a father in her life. She has one, but he has always lived in Hawaii and we don't see him much--which is actually a good thing. Suffice it to say that if I had applied the same standards I am trying to teach her to myself seventeen years ago, i guess i wouldn't be writing a blog to my daughter, now would I?

Thursday, August 26, 2010

a new character--Olivia

Olivia was a basket case the morning she found out her dog had been hit by a car. She went ahead and made coffee because she knew Barney was coming over to visit. Barney would know what to do about burying her dead dog. She couldn't just leave the dead dog to the spot by the tree where she had dragged it. Barney liked his coffee strong and black so she set out to grind some French Roast beans and fill the coffee pot with filtered water. Olivia's medicine sat on the kitchen table untouched. She knew she needed to take it--it had been four days since she had taken her last dosage.Sometimes she just didn't care. But now she had reached a crisis point. Four days with no medicine and a bright beautiful morning only to discover her dead dog on the road by the circle drive. Should she take it as an omen? No, it wasn't time to over react. She just needed to drink some coffee and visit with Barney.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Writing About Love

Love is an action, a hope, a longing, an excitement, an adventure, a thrill, something to look forward to, something to share. Love is about togetherness, uniqueness, beauty, and grace. Love is also about sadness, disappointment, anger, the need for privacy, and misunderstanding. So all these things may be taken into consideration when writing love poems and love letters. Not everything you write needs to be shared. Sometimes just the act of writing itself can be helpful. But if you think you want to share your love writings, then use lots of specific details and sensory descriptions. Exaggerate. Embellish. Really go all out. Use your experiences and your imagination together to build and create some awesome love writings. Make stuff up. Let yourself just make stuff up. It won't be easy at first because most of you are inclined to want to tell only the truth, but you have to elevate your writing to a new level when writing to or for a loved one. And remember that your love writing might be shared with others someday. Good writing always is.

Monday, August 23, 2010

A Writer's Office


A writer's office is a very personal space. Much goes into the decorations, the chair, the table, what is on the walls, and such. My office sort of evolved over a period of months. Now, I have dismantled it all by moving--again--so I have to start from scratch and the first decision I have to make is where to put my table and chair and computer. I know I don't want i to be right by the TV where it is now cause it's in the way there. I haven't felt at home in my office since i moved and i think it's because i haven't put the stuff in order yet. That has to be this week's priority. An office can only become productive when it suits the writer to a T. Or is that just another excuse i make up for not being able to write consistently? Only time will tell.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Chapter about Barney

Barney's Grandpa had raised him. Every Sunday, Barney and his Grandpa went to church riding in an old yellow Pinto. Grandpa was a tall man and it was hard for him to crunch his legs behind the wheel of a Pinto but he had got the car at an auction for twenty five bucks and it ran good and got excellent gas mileage and if Grandpa was anything he was practical and he'd always say it wasn't too much for a man to suffer a little discomfort in order to save a few bucks on the outrageous price of gasoline in the United States of America. Grandpa was a veteran. He'd served his time in the Army and had helped fight to preserve freedom and he was proud of that but he was also bitter about the fact that when he came back from the war his government didn't do more to honor what he'd lost to help them gain. Going to church though, grandpa told Barney one Bible quote after the other to impress upon his grandson that it wasn't right to let yourself get too caught up in the workings of the U.S. Government and that he should just remember that Jesus died on the Cross for all of us imperfect sinners and that no matter how bad things might seem to be, there was always hope cause of Jesus.

The Letting Go

Letting go of memories, people, material possessions, animals, attitudes...all can be difficult to do. It is the letting go that makes us whole again, though. Sometimes holding on to something immaterial or material can bring a person down and the only way to lighten the load is to let go of something. The more I practice this belief the healthier i feel; I also feel happier.

Friday, August 20, 2010

friendships...again

It's a Friday of a long, long last couple of weeks. Yesterday i wrote about the emotional disasters of friendships and today i am still living it. I think it's always hard to have a friendship between three women. Unless you are always on three way conference call things get said from one to one to the other and who knows what was REALLY said. So much depends on interpretation and perception. So much depends on how afraid you are of confrontation and conflict, too. I tend to want to avoid it, as most sensible people do, but lately I am in the middle of a bunch of it and i just don't like how that makes me feel. It robs me of my creative edge, my emotional energy and my mood starts to get low. I worry a lot. I fret. I over analyze. I try to make amends when i really don't want to just because i hate the feeling of ill will. It's not easy to break up a "girlfriendship." And why is that? Why is it easier to just leave a guy in the dust but not be able to even start the car to get away from a girlfriend? I know it's not very courageous or even honest to just not answer the phone, but that seems the easiest way in this day and age of "voicemail." Now I am faced with the idea of just taking a breather from the friendship to see what it is that settles after all the dust leaves. I need to understand what my true feelings are in order to take any or no action. But it feels so urgent, so much like I have to know right now exactly what to do....I'll have to continue my analysis and follow my heart, I guess. All I really know is I want to get back to writing poetry and writing my love novel about Lily and Hunter and their school bus life. Those have got to be my priorities....

Thursday, August 19, 2010

The Emotional Disasters of Friendship

When a natural disaster strikes, people are often caught without warning; and so it is with emotional disasters of friendship. I've lived through one recently with two of my best friends and the recovery process is proving difficult yet interesting. Even though I am almost 48 years old, I still have a lot to learn about friendship, loyalty, healing, grief and love.

When does a person decide that enough is enough? How many times does a person feel they have to be loyal to a friend but their heart tells them differently? And aren't friendships breaking up just as hard as any other relationship?

How does a person know when their "I'm really sorry" is genuine or just meant to make the other person feel good?

These are some of the issues I struggle with on a daily basis and soon want them to come to an end, a resolution. I have decided that some things aren't worth reconstructing after a disaster, as hard as it is to let them go.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Circus

Sometimes a bluesky day overrepresents itself.
The short circuits aren't crackling in ways
the electric company can fix.
Instead, the mind pulses on
complicated and frantic.

The tight rope walker goes
off to the left and falls
The bear comes down
off his ball and cries
The tiger roars to his own tune
and then bites the head
off his trainer and escapes onto Main Street
where he is promptly shot
by rather impervious deputies.

The blacktop is bleeding and broken into clumps
from where the elephants made their truths known.
One guy who jingle jangles their trunks full of old peanuts
turns beet red when the kids ask why he's whipping Dumbo.

this poem first appeared in Green Hills Literary Lantern

Riversongs

One
You rose from a river to find me in the confusion of woods
I took to you quickly like the way a summer thunderstorm
Just sweeps in and before you know it you're caught in an unexpected
Downpour that you don't mind getting soaked by.
Glue my feet to the earth
For a while so I have a chance to see if I can stand.

Two
I see you by the campfire in your plaid shirt
Your hair glows with the warmth of open flame
Your eyes are like a river to me.

Three
I see the full moon bright through the river trees
High up as we wait for the 6:30 whistle
Our waders baptized
By the small wave of trout fin
Oh so lovely to be in
that depth with you.

Four
You always were a wild boy in your Heart.
When I see that in you I begin to wonder can I
Start becoming a wild girl, wearing my waders
With sparkly earrings and pink lipstick in my pocket
But still putting the bait on my own hook,
Still slitting my own fishes throat.

Five
Let's cash in all our fool's gold and tell each other the stories
We both know so well about the times we lost our way
In the river but rose again from foam and current to piece together a survival.
We can thrive in the thrill of just living, breathing being
A grace we always before took for granted.

Monday, August 16, 2010

The Value of a Man

In my life as a woman, I have met and talked to a great number of men who are afflicted by something very sad, almost yes even tragic: the feeling that as men they are failures. Not because they are indecent, insincere or horrible people--but because they don't have a fancy car, big paying job, enough hair left on their head, or they are cursed to be 5'6" in a 6 foot tall man's kind of world.

So many of these men are hurting inside, silently and yet desperately flailing to keep from drowning in the seas of their presumed failures. They filter everything through their feelings of failure to "measure up" often never acknowledging their true gifts and abilities and what they actually do have to offer. Many remain unpaired, unmarried, and "homeless" in their hearts.

An excerpt from a Pablo Neruda poem captures the essence not of men's failures, but the failures of those who value the outward, not the inner:

What a pity that I have nothing to give you except
the nails of my fingers, or eyelashes, or
pianos melted by love
or dreams which pour from my Heart in torrents,
dreams covered with dust,
dreams full of velocities and misfortunes

I can love you only with kisses and
poppies, with garlands wet with rain



What a pity that I have nothing to give you except the nails of my fingers: working fingers to the bone, digging a driveway by hand, with a shovel in the rain, not paying for a big bulldozer to come in and do the work in an hour, but digging and moving rock by hand because that is the physical urge of a man, to feel rain drizzling on his face, his muscles working for a necessary purpose,not just pumping iron in a closed up sweaty gym.

What a pity that I have nothing to give you except pianos melted by love: that someone could play music so intensely, with fingers led by a muse so strong and full of life and love that the piano itself would just melt.

What a pity that I have nothing to give you but Dreams which pour from my heart in torrents: that a man could profess and share his innermost thoughts and dreams without fearing judgement for not achieving them yet. To hear a man talk at length for hours on a midnight phone about his boyhood dream of one day becoming an astronaut. Flying to the moon to blow his mother a kiss. The dreams can be enough without having to back them up with a three thousand dollar a month paycheck, or by trophies, plaques, or awards.

I can love you only with kisses and poppies. I can't give you jewelry or a split-level home with new wall to wall carpet--only kisses. I know of many women married to wealthy men who have all the gadgets and niceties and yet--no kisses to give. Love you only with kisses--who does not want the kisses? What is a diamond necklace next to the thousands of kisses that could sparkle in a lover's eyes?

What a pity indeed that so many men nowadays have none of this poetry to give. That they judge themselves by their financial worth, their investments, their Ira's. The greatest failure of all is to be valued by outward successes, not inner ones.

When will men and women alike see that it is the gift of poetry, of genuine expression of dreams shared and kisses and "garlands wet with rain" that truly make a man worthwhile? When will people wake up to the fact that there ARE women in this world who want the kisses and the pianos melted by love and the dreams full of velocities and misfortunes?

The Last First Day of School

I woke up this morning to realize that in two days my seventeen year old daughter will experience her last first day of school. She will be a senior this year and will graduate May of 2011. Where did all the years go? Of course I know I am not the only mother to wonder this, but it feels like I am. My feelings are mixed. I am happy that she has made it this far, yet I wish she were still ten. I wish she were still playing clarinet in the seventh grade band or running cross country in ninth grade or singing in the sixth grade choir or asking me to bring cupcakes to her fifth grade Halloween Party. What about all the beautiful Christmas pageants she has been in? What about her little backpack jiggling as she ran to catch the big yellow school bus? What about running in the door after school to give me a big hug and say so proudly "I have homework!!!!" The years have passed fastly by and now I am facing her very last first day of school. I want to throw a big party. I want to buy her a card. I want to get her a car, a cadillac, a limo, her own big yellow school bus. But I guess it's just another rite of passage, a time to reflect, to remember, to think back and to realize there is still time to enjoy one last school year.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Poem About Leon Hall--my Uncle

On Sunday's when we'd go visit
he was almost always in the barn.
Sometimes he'd let me go in circles
with the horse walker inside the big
white barn round and round with his
Tennessee Walkers to cool them down
after riding or to exercise winter muscles.

Uncle Leon would come into the house
bringing the aroma of hay and mud and
grass and horse and he'd have to duck
his head through the short little kitchen
door into a room warm with Aunt Mary's
banana nut date bread and the sweet of ripening
peaches from the orchard just down hwy 21.

Breathing him in was like a field of wildflowers
and wind. He was a gracious man.

Leon Hall had a big heart and a bigger laugh
that came from way deep down. He loved his horses.
his family, and the big openness of the grassy fields
and trees of Bridle Ridge Acres.

When a man like Leon Hall would sweep you into a hug
and carry you piggyback around the twelve foot long
dining room table it felt like Christmas morning,
like a star had fallen from the sky,
lighting everything.

I think he made a lot of people feel that way.
You knew you were in the presence of someone Great
someone respected, a man who loved big,
a man who had the gift of vision
and a knack for making other people's dreams
come true. Leon Hall had charisma, an energy,
a rare kind of beauty--

And everyone who holds a memory of Leon Hall
they know how precious each reminisce is.
He was a true Southern Gentleman,
so few like him left
on this Earth and in this world.
There will never be another Leon Hall.

Do you sometimes when you dream of heaven
hear his big laugh and see his smile and
those twinkling eyes and hear the clickety clack
of an old Tennessee Walker gaiting across the clouds?

Betty's Orioles

Come in flying with clouds and wind
they look for the oranges, grape jelly,
the oriole feeder, and Betty.

She puts up lace curtains then watches
through the panels to see her orioles
wind down their flight
for a month of heaven
before they fly all the back to Baltimore.

Do they know what a haven
they have been coming to
all these years?

Bird mommies tell the story
to their babies and when the newbirds
arrive, Betty's greetings dot
the yard all over with orange,
the solicitation of loyalty,
and a love of birds
that even Audobon couldn't match.