chicken scratch--literally

If I'm being honest, and you always should when you write, I am best at prose, these days. Chicken scratch. And writing on photographs. I'll show you if you ask. It's like painting. Well, no, it is painting. It's using words to paint a picture. No, it's using a picture to paint your words...
I realize some people actually want to know how to write. Well, I won't spend your time or mine on grammar or punctuation...but it does matter. Anyway, you-just-write-and-don't care. You will find something in yourself when you do that and it will surprise you what you were thinking.
nostalgia
perplexed? don't fall through
the ice-
i only said hello
i slept in a canopy of howls
and marked the way back
with pieces of bread
crumbs

...and then you can shape it later, if you want to shape it later...

This-is prose. I think it's horrible that Ginsberg had a thing for boys in his basement, and I can't say I stand for all of 'Howl' but it's brilliant. Always been one of my favorites. Read it. Read America. William Carlos Williams- another one. His short stories make me want to write and make sense of something. He will make you want to write like dancing.
I wrote "I miss you" in the sky with a flashlight- from the base of "somewhere over the rainbow" listening to bon iver and thinking about trains. you would understand, i think. and in another life, you may appreciate that. but I don't believe in other lives...just this one.

Main st smells like a big city if you catch it by a donut shop, someone smoking, coffee in hand and the sound of a bus. the city is everywhere. the whole rest of the world is an inch- ONE INCH from the tip of my nose. my porch. the whole-world.
it seems strange to feel trapped when you think of it that way.

i live in a town where I can say i took my dress to francis st and everyone know I am talking about the cleaners.

each step of the walking waking world would make the most incredible song...the-most-incredible song. I don't find myself in a new pair of shoes like some people I know. I don't think it's bad that they do, in fact I am jealous, probably. perhaps I am the dullard. it's like you see your whole life broken in to pieces when you need the big picture, like a daunting landscape of years and vacations and pictures that tell a story you wish you were a part of. i am not the den mother. I am not the voice of reason in the thriller. am i?

sang in my head the entire time was bumpy
i think it rained yesterday
was windy and I was
numb

i told my sister I would write about what I would tell the 17 year old me. surprisingly, i have only a few things for now...if it's possible to even attempt that novel, here is the beginning, I suppose:

play basketball this year. you will still want to kick box in 10 years, and you can--then.

keep playing-the-piano.  sing more. sing. sing. sing. don't stop singing your freshman year of college. sing. it wakes your soul up. don't forget that, it will change you temporarily if you forget that.

don't get in the car with 'X'.

don't fall for something later just because it's a really good story. you will realize, all too late, that's all it was--a really good story.  and the irony of your life will be that you are the only one who won't buy it.

prose.

Battleship

Healing from a battle wound is like standing on the shore.  There are times the pain calmly laps over your feet and never once does it hinder your ability to walk-to STOMP- all over and inside of it.  Then, as the tide rises, it seems to surprise as it swallows you. Covers your head.  No up from down.  And you are left in a cloud of sand that hides your predators, and you are left with burning, aching lungs.  The more you fight this, the less energy you have to fight...this.

While I write from the edges of my heart on this blog, I keep some things cryptic on purpose.  Although written to a phantom audience, even some of those ghosts have no business knowing.
Writing heals, and it can also wound.  You can easily write yourself in circles until you feel--and welcome--familiar warm arms of apathy to enclose you.  In these arms you believe the lie that you have no strength to fight. And you stop.

It's tricky, though.

Once you are consumed in that tidal wave, be it fear or sadness, you incur less injury by being limp.  Your predators may leave if they think you already dead.  So, how is one to know what to do?

I believe, with all of my heart, that a person's mouth will be their undoing.  Words matter matter matter. So, as I write this I'm faced with a choice: do I write about the tide, all be it true, or do I write about the calm with will come?
I will choose the latter.

To follow a dream you must know it exists or you will find yourself chasing the wind. I believe my husband's dream exists. I believe in my dream. My dream is family.
Family is institution. Family is diversity within unity. Family is love. Family is God's heart.

Strong families make a strong nation. I have never fought a war of nations, but I am a soldier. Sometimes, ladies, we need to be silent. When you look at your husband in the eyes like a deer in the headlights, when your inside voice is screaming and beating words up your throat, when your burning lungs in that tidal wave have just enough air to push your very heart past your tongue...we just need to be silent and search our hearts.  This makes us soldiers.

This use of 'soldier' is not to be mistaken for being a martyr, as some wives are King of (play on words intentional). It's easy to mutter beneath our breath as we do the dishes, as we pick up clothes (am I the only one who knows where the hamper is?). Or as we submit.  I have learned that submission does NOT mean going placidly in the night as pirates devour my gold. This word encompasses a battle of fighting pirates within OURSELVES- and takes incredible force and endurance.  And some nights our battle is to walk the halls alone, again, at 2 am, holding our crying babes.
But you see...this is my life.  It is no one's job but mine to choose joy in my life.

Some would say that being joyful and trusting God through these tidal waves makes for a controlled and boring life.  Still, others ask, "Isn't it a crutch?"
Believing and trusting in the Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the craziest adventure of...well...my life.  Boring? Not even for a minute.
Is it also a crutch? Absolutely. And I welcome these limp legs in this wave because then there is rescue. And I need that 'crutch' that is my God because I cannot do this alone.

Can you?

Don't you ever just feel like you just-can't-do-it?

I have a choice in this tidal wave, and I choose to ride these waves with generous dignity.  When I can't fight, the Lord God of Israel will fight for me and I need only to be still. And this makes me a soldier.
My battles will be fought and won and great will be my children's peace.