WHY I WRITE

I write to explore.

Like a road that wanders

to where I do not know.


In this earthly shell of one body

lies the flitting thoughts of many other potential roads.

The knowing that all our lives

could/would/did take certain paths

but what if?


What if a different choice had been made in a different moment?

Where would that path have lead?

Who would I have been?

Or what about living in a different time?

On a different continent?

What about trying to survive in a world

that made no sense at all?

How would I have lived and navigated then?


Crossing the west in a covered wagon,

being a geisha with porcelain Asian features,

or a young woman in Auschwitz during WW 2

What would have been the motives, the hopes, the choices?

Those worlds all contained plots and the characters that imbibed them.


Writing brings them out of the shrouds of time

cancels the mystery of distance

so they can climb right off the page

live out the words you write for them.

Making choices both heroic and not.

Being superbly human all unfolds

if you let it.


The tumbling kaleidoscope
of thoughts and patterns
translating into words
lets a writer explore
as many potential worlds
as Livingstone or Maro Polo
could have only dreamed of roaming.


While I am gently tethered to this earth with a physical body
the mind knows no such constraints
can move across culture and borders
and transcend even time itself.

In the crafting of words both delicate and heavy
emerges entire worlds e
equally as rich as the physical moment of now.

Think of your favorite character from a novel
and how meeting that character within the pages of a book transformed you.
Added dimension to how you viewed your own world.

You can be assured it transformed the writer who thought of it also.

It is in this glorious quest

for exploration and transformation

that I write

I AM THAT WOMAN

The one you overlook at first glance

Who appears world weary and drab

or

who seems to have a glint in her eye that makes you look twice

The one with veiled questions in her gaze that must be answered

Yes I am the sum of them all

I am that woman



My heart beats

My lungs sing with the new day

and my heart is alive

ALIVE

do you hear me?



I create your beloved home

The food that you eat

The child that you cherish



I am woman

As essential to life as sunshine to the earth

Do not count my voice as absent

as I am your wife, mother, sister, friend,

grandmother

and a million other wombs

all carrying the drumbeat of your male warrior hearts



Listen to me

I speak in the rain beating on your roof

The liquid falling silver of a full moon

and the promise of each new day



I am the one you hold in your arms at night

I am in your identity

guardian of hearth and of future



Do not pass by me in a hurried rush

Stop.

Hush!

Listen...

While I Suffer

a complete writers block,

there is this...

Quotes that inspire me.

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."--Tolstoy

"Be kind to unkind people...they need it the most." --Mark Twain

"Discovery consists in seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." -- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

"You don't have to be anti-man to be pro-woman". ~Jane Galvin Lewis

"Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths." ~Lois Wyse

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."--Tolstoy

and one last one to laugh at,


"To be is to do"--Socrates. "To do is to be"--Sartre. "Do be do be do"--Sinatra.

so there we have it.

Points to ponder. A lifestyle to live. A world to create.

Once In Awhile

Once in a while

there are those times when

there are no words

nothing

to relay the absolute height of joy

nothing

to plumb the depths of sorrows

nothing to account for when you come home at night

knowing that all your struggles

dont matter

at least

that is what you think in the moment

sleep long

drink deeply of stillness and rest

wake up

a new day

one that will stun you with possibilities

where nothing is as bad as you thought

and along with the shining of the dawn

is a rising of knowledge within

you are capable

Warning!

Postcard from the edge of the universe

SO...

I had one of those days...have you had one?

One of those days where you wake up and your dreams were as rich as syrup and the colors and the feelings stay with you even while you rise from a deeply emerged state of sleep.

Its hard to shake those morning moments when the fairy dust residue of your nocturnal wanderings hangs over your head like Napalm making you gloomy and disoriented while you struggle to adjust your eyes to the morning brightness and banish your dreams to wherever dreams are stored.

It is further juxtaposed from reality if you have a to do list of chores written the day before that didn't allow or take in to account that you were going to wake up in a weird mind with the wrong lens on your mental camera photograph of the day.

You drink some stiff coffee and reconcile yourself to the fact that the dream world is far removed from the "real world" (thank goodness) and begin to tackle your list..the list that existed before you slept and dreamed....

The drinking of coffee and referring to the list worked for me on this particularly odd day where I found it hard to shake the dream state.

The reality is I have company coming and I needed to get the guest house ready. We recently refurbished an empty rental unit that we own and are using over the summer and fall for guests that visit. It is cleaned and ready except that the shower needs a shower curtain. I had that incorporated into a long to do list as these guests are "business guests" and even though I hadn't met them - I wanted them to be comfortable and to feel welcomed.

This explains my morning trek, sans breakfast to the local dollar store to find a shower curtain.
The dollar store is a wonderful place.

OH MY GOODNESS !

The things you can buy for a dollar!

I don't go there enough to get jaded apparently, so I was entranced with everything and finally filled a basket. When I walked up to pay, I saw out of the corner of me eye, a woman...

this was an Amazon women.

She was at least 6 feet tall and every bit as stunning as Cindy Crawford at her career height.
As we waited in line we listened to the cashier patiently ask each customer head of us it they would like to donate there change to a charity. Gosh I thought..how old would that get each and everyone all day long.. asking each person that.
so when I got to my turn in line I said

"I bet you get tired of saying that."

She smiled and said "yes."

Meanwhile, Cindy Crawford only better, behind me, proceeded to go off on a total rant about charities being rip offs. Because she was so tall and physically elegant and because I am so short and un elegant I was privy to her upper mouth and she was missing a tooth!

The one that is supposed to reside next to the 2 front teeth.

Wow.
She was so beautiful and so angry and yet all I could focus on was that gap.

She ranted on and on, this most beautiful Cindy Crawford look alike person.

I felt the heat of embarrassment creep up my neck. I felt like I got the cashier into something by my words.

I was never so happy as when I was rung up and could grab my bags and flee the crazy "Crawford" woman!

What gives?

I thought as I drove home...

what is it about passion losing itself, if it comes in a mouth with a missing tooth?

I hung the shower curtain for the guests and then I wrote this story

I don't pretend to know what it all means.

The old woman sits with hands crossed

she remembers back to a time when those same hands

younger

smaller

watched while others held the rough edge of a blanket

elders showing her the art of smoke signals

no longer used

now reduced to the stuff of old stories

fire, water, smoke,

blanket = communication

between far away people

a sort of primitive prairie binary code

if you will

one puff yes

two puffs no

now all of it taken care of by satellites

we gaze at them each night

their existence burns in the heavens

Seashore

Water air and sun
with salty swoosh it beckons
Come and stand where wonder begins

To play
with sand pails and shovels
children leave their creations
gift offerings
for the tide to consume each day

the lost come here to find themselves
and the found to be reminded
of their infinitesimal smallness against the work of an eternal hand

civilization crowds with concrete and glass against its shore
the crush of man at lifes edge
the siren song calls them all

come here to die
come here to live!
Come!
you who seek....

and I will give.