writing

Emergency Blogcast System

/ autumncircles / Leave a comment

This is a test of the Emergency Blogcast System. The blogger you are reading in voluntary cooperation with her keyboard and other authorities (i.e., her brain and emotions) have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency get away. This is only a test.

It was a dark and stormy night. At least, that’s what her brain was telling her. The thunder roared all around her as if the infamous Concorde itself was crashing in her backyard. Lightning blinded her vision every few seconds and the rain poured in like bullets from the many holes in her roof.

“When will this end?” she cried softly underneath the wet blankets she pulled over top to shield herself.

As the woman lay sobbing, she plotted her escape. She knew in order to be free of the torrential downpours that consistently destroyed her home, she had to get away. She had heard of a place once where it hardly ever rained and when it did, it was like dew drops kissing the earth. Nothing like the laser guided water cannon she was experiencing tonight. She longed for that place and prayed with all of her soul to find out how to get there.

She’d had road maps before on how to find it, but it still eluded her. She sought the directions of many who had claimed to make it and come back to tell the tale, yet here she still lay, soaked to bone and jolting involuntarily with every thunderous cry. She didn’t think those directions were purposefully misleading or untruthful, they had only led her to a certain point in the journey and then stopped. She was now in a middle ground area without guidance or any more useful clues on how to complete this trek across baron countryside, dense forests and steep, steep mountains.

She had kept going thinking that for sure there would be some sort of mile marker or sign in the path that indicated she was still going the right way, but those, too, had stopped appearing many unthinkable miles ago. Or maybe she had just missed them because she could barely see through darkness. She only traveled in the cover of night as her days were spent pretending the night would never come all the while obsessively stocking supplies for her eventual underground travels. Now she feared she was totally lost without the ability to find her way back to where she was nor the stamina to keep going forward.

This was not the first time her quest’s path had veered dramatically from what she thought it was supposed to be. In fact, she was surprised she had made it this far. She had wanted to give up numerous times before, but something, something greater than herself, kept her going.

And now?

Well, now she was just fucking tired. She was tired of always picking up the reins of the horse to lead the carriage through the next deep valley or raging river. She was tired of looking to other people to take those reins with her only to be told that it doesn’t work that way. She must do it on her own. She looked around her and saw others doing it, why couldn’t she? She heard other folks get the words of encouragement needed to keep going, why wasn’t she hearing any?

So, on this night, the one that had become so dark and stormy, she decided she was done. She reached out and threw off the covers. The rain hit her hard enough to knock her back down. She got up again and stood strong. She looked around and tried to see which direction she would take. By all accounts and previous experience, she knew she should take the path to the right. It provided cover from the rain and there was a fifty-fifty chance she’d make it to next clearing before collapsing in exhaustion. Then she could rest again and start over. At least she would get respites from the rain.

The path on the left, however, looked less familiar, more daunting. There was no cover from the rain or lightning. The horizon was far off in the distance and she knew it would be dangerous and the opportunities to get lost again were great. It was totally open, no way to mark where she had been in case she wanted to find her way back. No way to plan which way she would proceed forward in a linear fashion. She could easily think she was walking in a straight line, but end up having curved far to the east or west without ever knowing it until it was much too late.

There was one benefit to this left pathway – it was full of sunshine. She could not see a cloud, well, at all. None. Just warm sun basking on the ground below.

It took her only a moment to make the choice. She took a deep breath, smoothed out her hair and took a step. Then another and another. She began to run. She ran so fast, she was quickly out of view…

If this had been an actual emergency, the Attention Getting Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news or instructions on how not to find the true location of the blogger.

Reasoning work versus Playful rhyme

/ autumncircles / 1 Comment

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Entering the ring, wearing the blue silk, business casual trunks and weighing in at a whopping weight of the world status of four hundred and fifty seven pounds is our challenger!  She’s mean, she’s tough – she stomps on daisies and eats b-u-n-n-y  r-a-b-b-i-t-s for breakfast!! Give it up for the Queen of Restraint, the Bitch of the Boardroom – MS. AFFLICTED!!

[The capacity crowd boos and throws popcorn.]

And now, flying in to reclaim her original title – she’s calm, she’s beautiful – she makes us laugh and cry with her peaceful kind of love and takes her man’s b-r-e-a-t-h  a-w-a-y!!  Wearing tye-dye trunks and weighing in at a compact fighting feather weight as light as air is our people’s choice champion – put your hands together for our Woman of the World, Child of the Universe and the Zen Goddess – HARMONY’S CHILD!!

[The crowd goes wild – screams and cheers echo all the way to the moon.]

The two fighters are poised in their corners.  Ms. Afflicted is snarling and blood is pouring from her mouth as she has just bitten the head off of a baby chick. She is already dripping with a grimy, gray sweat and pounding her fists together. Harmony’s Child hovers above the canvas in the lotus position, eyes closed chanting the love of the ages oblivious to not only Ms. Afflicted, but the millions of eyes and hearts on her every breath. She glows with a light of serenity that secures her place in life.

Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!

The bell sounds.

————————————–

And, by bell, I mean the alarm clock goes off and I start my day which frequently resembles the equivalent of a Rocky Balboa sized prize fight with me battling the demons of responsibility, all cut up and swollen screaming for my family and love much like he did with Adrian.

My reality lies somewhere in between harmony and affliction.  I don’t think I am much different from most folks trying to live their lives amid the human race. And yet, I masterfully convince myself that I am the only one who struggles, who is unable to work an eight hour day, get the kids to/from school, make dinner, clean the kitchen, do the laundry, walk the dog, please the husband and fulfill creative desires without neglecting the ones she loves. My affliction is adept at making sure I feel unworthy to have these children or the true love of a husband or even the talent to write a blog. So, I don’t do any of it and the house becomes a mess, the kids watch TV and a stoic silence erupts between my husband and I. I become brainwashed to believe that my children despise me, that my husband only tolerates me because it would be too difficult to leave, and that no one will ever understand and appreciate my writing much less consider it genius enough to publish.

I read another woman’s blog the other day – clusterfook.com, which I highly recommend – and someone apparently accused her of being depressing.  She has been fighting cancer for over five years (I believe) and is chronicling her journey through a blog. I am fighting having a day job wishing I was at home writing Nobel Laurette poetry and those interminable ten pounds that I cannot seem to get rid of off my ass. My site is depressing – hers is remarkable. And the most remarkable part is that she would probably not compare our two struggles in the way I do.

The truth is that we both receive some sort of relief from writing about our lives and pain and joys and sorrows. We both carry on the tradition of humanity that began in caves thousands and thousands of years ago with simple figures drawn on the rock and grunts around a warming fire that turned into many languages of expression.

My prayers are for Lisa’s voice to delight the fires of her family for many, many more years as well as the rest of us peeking into her world through our brightly lit LCDs and keyboards.

And me?  Well, I’ll keep on-keeping on.  I’ll try new things like a joint writing project with another blogger and maybe playing at photography and work on old ones like accepting and trusting life, each other and the universe.

Hot shame and cross blogging

/ autumncircles / 2 Comments

In this new world of blogging and having blogging friends and commenting acquaintances, I, too, felt some flashes of hot shame while reading others comments.

One in particular caught me as I read a friends blog that referred to my blog and the comments posted on it.  It triggered that flash of hot flaming shame I know only too well and struggle daily to keep under wraps.

There buried in the numerous comments from her fans was a remark that flushed me with that same flash of red over my head and down to my toes as if the person screamed it in my face hoping to get me to move.

“..so carefully constructed it was clear the author was taking few risks…”

Had she read my blog entries?  Was she writing about me?  Why does it bother me?  Of course I edit and change and exaggerate to bring my warped sensibilities to the small world I call mine.  From there cascaded a shame attack and run of what I’d written through my head.

I’ll show them, I thought, I’ll just write – unedited for 15 minutes and see where it gets me.

And that is what I am doing right now.  Writing plain and simple from my head to my fingers to my keyboard without hitting the delete key or backstroke – unless I misspell hte wodr.  (hahaha)

I set a timer and promised myself to do this at least once – not go back and sensor myself.  However, in doing so, I find little to write about.  I want so much to take these plain words from my lips and make them unique and flowered like Texas bluebonnet hills beside busy highways.

It’s the writer’s greatest dream, isn’t it?  To achieve absolution from all of the soul searching and human angst with a few strokes of a pen or taps on a keyboard.

6 minutes left.

My brain works much faster than I a can possibly keep up with in reality.  I certainly hope that I can spill out what is inside into a jumbled mess on white paper and then go back like a jigsaw puzzle to make sense out of it, rearrange it, alter it, give it a make over, and make it more enjoyable for someone else to relate to in some fashion.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could actually like the way I write without this added layer of cut and paste.  Maybe that is my old insecurities rearing their not-too-attractive head inside my much too comfortable skin these days.  I still, after all these years, want people to like me.  Like what I do.  Like what I say.

3:45

The other comments referred to Buddha and struggle and joy being one in the same (my paraphrase – remember, I cannot go back and check or fix).  If this is true, me and Buddha are tight.  There are moments when the joy I feel is so intense that a small pain erupts in my chest.  My daughter’s eyes.  Her giant, brown eyes that seem to go on forever.  My son’s smile – the one he lets me see only by chance anymore because he is trying to be so grown up, so tough at nine.

These are joys and they pang my heart.  Can you imagine what I make of my actual struggles?

Only a minute to go now…

I cannot even perform this exercise without trying to do it “correctly” – constantly checking my time to see if I’ve “cheated.”  What the fuck is wrong with my brain that I won’t let this totally go?  Will it be gone when it’s my time in heaven?  What if I don’t believe there is a heaven or hell?

Uh-oh…time’s up…

Will have to leave the rest for another post.

I guess I don’t type as fast at I thought.

(And, yes, these last four lines were typed outside of my self-imposed 15 minute timer…;o)