Tag: writing (Page 3 of 5)

rhonda writes: day 1

August 30, 2011 / jeanne / 28 Comments

Lotus

This post is penned by my friend, Rhonda whose multiple sclerosis landed her in hospice in January of this year. Rhonda is a writer, and though she she’s not afraid of death, she is not ready because she still has so much to say. Like any writer, Rhonda wants to know her words are being read, so when she recently gave me her journal entries describing her first week in hospice, I offered to post them here on my blog. I am doing only light editing – formatting, mostly, and deleting the occasional sentence that the software was unable to understand and interpret. Because of the disease, Rhonda doesn’t have the breath support to string together long sentences or to sustain any volume to speak of. When we talk on the phone, she is very patient as I repeatedly ask her to repeat what she just said or repeat back the bits I understood, asking her to fill in the gaps.

You may want to start here then follow the links at the end of each post to read yourself current. It means a lot to Rhonda to know how her words are landing in the world, so please leave a comment if you feel inspired to, and she will reply as and when she is able. Rhonda writes with the assistance of talk-to-text software, and some days her energy level doesn’t even permit that, so if she doesn’t reply to your comment, don’t interpret her silence as anything but a lack of available energy or available assistance, as she now requires help to do the most basic things that we take for granted. Somebody is reading your comments to her, though, you can be sure of that, and she is receiving them with a grateful heart. From both of us, thank you for being here, for bearing witness to this remarkable, amazing woman.

~~~

Day 1, Thursday

I came here without thinking that hospice really had much to do with dying.

I plan to write in this journal as I have the chance. I will share my first week here. I write only truth.

I recently brainstormed a list to leave for my son, Marco when I pass away. It lists all of the things that have been most important to me throughout my life. I’ll leave it here in snippets:

READING AND WRITING

Reading and writing make me feel more alive.

I love to read. I love to write. I know that I am not alone.

“We read to know we’re not alone.” C.S. Lewis

I long to journal write. More than writing in order to remember, I write to consider what I think and feel. Only when I am more fully interacting with the world, do I move with power and wisdom.

I was reasonably healthy before multiple sclerosis separated me from my family. Hospice will keep you for a while, I understood. Just until a new care facility has an opening in Pella.

This assumption that going away from home was only temporary proves that I really don’t accept the direness of my situation. I am not like most people my age. I am not like most other wives and mothers. I can’t escape with Mike to a Caribbean island or to somewhere warm for a golf vacation. I can’t float on noodles with Marco over to a poolside refreshment kiosk for smoothies with umbrellas.

Playing the head disconnection game of “I would be” will only let me fly in the clouds temporarily before I realize they aren’t as cushy as they appear, and I would eventually fall through and bonk my head as I crash up against reality. Mike and I will never take a vacation together. Marco and I will never float on noodles. Surreal.

Barb comes by to welcome us. She checks-in the new patients with questions regarding name, birth date, and funeral home of choice. Mike and I look at one another in disbelief because we had never considered the question. “We haven’t really thought about it yet,” I said slowly and ethereally, as if speaking from The Twilight Zone. “That’s okay,” she said, crossing off a necessary question. “Just be thinking about it.”

When I arrive five other rooms are occupied. We are full. I get there in the afternoon. I smell the cookies baking. Comfort House, they call it. Comfort for the ones dying but especially for those grieving. Comfort.

I am “comfortable” when Mike leaves. In front of the faux fireplace he leaves me. With a goodbye kiss he leaves. Mike leaves. All afternoon I sit in one place, never moving, hardly blinking or breathing, unbelieving that I am actually in hospice. Hospice at 42. Alone. All I really want to do is stare at the wall. Without my family. Surreal.

Betty, hunched over in her simple wheelchair and laboring applesauce to her groping lips, is the first patient I see–but only from across the room. All of our rooms are singles. Only family allowed. Death is otherwise private. Betty has no family here, they say. Dropped her off, moved her in, then left. Does she stare at the walls, too?

I am reading about Mother Teresa’s decades of “darkness.” She initially had a very intimate experience with Jesus, so intimate that she heard a voice (Jesus’, she thought) that bid start the Missionaries of Charity. Like Jesus, she experienced God in darkness. Like Jesus, she suffered.

Joe loves to watch the eagles. We are hooked-up to wireless. Joe doesn’t watch TV, booming at rock concert decibels the Iowa evening news–dueling corn reports–like the rest. He watches an eagle cam. Hard to have much hubbub for us voyeurs, though, when the extent of excitement is watching big Mama eagle re-situating herself on the three eggs. So that I don’t miss the action, I bookmark the site on my web addresses. I watch too. It’s the rhythm of the place.

As the day is dying down a lonely harmonica plays church hymns. Resident? Family member? Soothing, sometimes missing-a-note, music. Comfort. But not the music I want to die to.

~~~

go here to Day 2

naked

August 29, 2011 / jeanne / 28 Comments

Lotus

My friend Rhonda has seen me naked.

Seriously.

Rhonda and I met in graduate school where she was a semester ahead of me. When she told me that a section of her thesis involved nude portraits of several women, I gladly volunteered to buzz around helping her recruit, my unspoken way to show appreciation for the absence of my name on her list. The last night of our residency, Rhonda plopped down in the cold metal folding chair to my left and asked, “So, are you gonna’ pose for me?” “Absolutely. Yes,” I said, the absence of hesitation surprising me. “Just tell me when and where.”

We met early the next morning, when the air had a crisp edge to it and layers of fog added dimension to the landscape. “I have two special places picked out for you,” she said as she led me first to the Meditation House, a small one-room-with-a-fireplace structure on campus. I wasn’t really nervous, but you’d never believe that by the way nonstop chatter (mostly about my body issues) poured from my mouth as I disrobed while Rhonda readied her camera.

“Oh,” she said with a tone of surprise as she looked up to see me standing completely naked. “I was only going to photograph your top half.” We laughed, then I shrugged and she shrugged, positioned my fully-nude body in front of a wall whose age could be gauged by the various colors of peeling paint, backed her tripod up (considerably), and snapped away. That done, she beckoned me follow her into the woods where I eventually sat my naked bum on moss and logs and the occasional stick or stone, the click of her camera providing us background music.

It was my first and only nude photo shoot, and well, etiquette books just don’t cover such things as this. Figuring the less said the better, I said nothing on the outside, but oh my goodness: on the inside, my arms stretched out wide enough to embrace the earth – the whole planet, I tell you – and my head threw itself back with a smile bright enough to confuse the moon. On the inside, my entire body laughed and danced and delighted to be a part of this project celebrating women and their bodies in all their varied shapes and sizes and (so-called) imperfections . . . a project made even more significant by the fact that Rhonda has MS, Multiple Sclerosis.

Winter semesters found her using crutches, but the heat of summers was hard on her body, sometimes forcing her to resort to a wheelchair for transportation. Sitting in circles was not at all an infrequent occurrence at Goddard, and as we sat in one circle, I made a rare audible contribution and noted the dramatic change in Rhonda’s mobility when she held a camera in her hands. Give her a camera, and Rhonda sat on top of picnic tables, climbed trees, stood in chairs – why I believe that girl would’ve crawled to sit on the roof of the bell tower if it meant getting a better shot. With her muse in hand, the transformation was a sight to behold.

She found a small, seldom-used room for her Graduating Senior Presentation and lined the walls with our nude portraits. I thought there might be some nervous tittering, but the silence of awe ruled the day. Rhonda spoke quietly about the project, sprinkling her words with comments we’d each written after our respective photo shoots.

She’d recently seen The Vagina Monologues, and in keeping with the tradition, she wrote her own Vagina Monologue, including it as a chapter in her thesis. Words haven’t been invented to tell you how downright tickled I was when she asked me to read her V.M. as part of her presentation. Lord, that was fun.

Rhonda is now in hospice, and though she doesn’t fear death, she does dread it a bit because she still has so much she wants to say. And there’s so much we need to hear. “Jeanne, they tell me to rest,” she said in a recent phone call with a tone that’s as close to whining as I’ve ever heard come from her lips. “Fuck that,” I said. “You can rest later. Now you write. And write. And write.”

And write she does – with the aid of talk-to-text software – when and as she can. Her computer nearly crashed week before last, and she’s just getting everything set up again. I’ve offered to host her writings here – the essays she’s currently writing about life in the hospice, interviews and chats we’ve had and will have, and eventually her thesis. There’s no schedule here – I can’t tell you when or how often her words will appear, I can only tell you that they start tomorrow. There may be a post a day, there may be multiple posts a day. There may be days between posts. It goes as it goes. I’ll tweet (@WhollyJeanne) and post on Facebook (InJeanneious and WhollyJeanne) when there’s something new here, so be sure we’re connected, or just peek back in when you think about it.

And listen – don’t be shy. Take a few minutes to talk to Rhonda in the comment section – make your comments as long as they need to be, come back and leave additional comments if you think of something you wish you’d said. Rhonda doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t flinch in living, she doesn’t flinch in dying, and she doesn’t flinch in her writing. That’s one of the many, many, many, many reasons I love her. Talk to her. Let her know what succulence you take from her words and how they touch you. Join me in bearing witness and holding the space for Rhonda to live and live fully until she dies.

~~~

Go here next . . .

today

June 1, 2011 / jeanne / 3 Comments

This month, because I live for non-conformity (and to keep from having to think of something to write about) I am participating in a challenge designed to celebrate Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 208th birthday. (Honestly, he doesn’t look a day over 112 to me.)

Today’s prompt:
Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. The force of character is cumulative. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tracks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day.

~~~~~~~

ColoradoClouds

Today I laughed
and stitched
and wrote like there was a
clearance sale on words
in a store that welcomes checks.

January’s Idea of Time Management

February 1, 2011 / jeanne / 11 Comments

Logs

Don’t read. There’s time for enrichment and enjoyment later. You’ve much more important work that needs to get out the door now.

Don’t exercise. Moving from bed to desk chair to bathroom to kitchen to table to laundry room and back to bed is enough movement for now.

Don’t slow down to write thank you notes. You’ll still be thankful later.

Don’t turn on any music, it might distract you and make you forget what needs to be done now.

Bubble baths, leisurely walks in the wood, afternoons spent behind a book are indulgences you earn by getting things done. And since you haven’t gotten nearly enough done, head down and back to work with you.

When you can’t sleep at night, just lay there and think about how awful it is that you can’t sleep. Or get up and get something done. But don’t you dare get up to write or draw or read or stitch.

Just keep saying “Yes” and eliminate every form of “no” from your vocabulary.

Put your friends on hold. If they’re really true friends, they’ll still be around when you’ve caught up.

Don’t waste time putting things up – out of sight equals out of mind. Just pile things up on your desk, on the floor, on tabletops throughout the house. Consider creating mountains as creativity, if it makes you feel better.

Buy a gross of sticky note pads (okay, make it 2 gross) and write one item – only one – from your to do list on a single sticky note. Pretty soon your walls, ceilings, even your furniture will be colorfully shingled. (Of course at the rate you accomplish things, the sticky will eventually wear off, so be sure to write yourself a reminder to replace fallen notes.)

Accept every offer to go out to eat – every single offer. Just remember to eat fast so you can get back to work. The extra weight? Bah, you can lose that later.

Writing retreat with friends? You can do that one day when you’ve whittled down your to do list. You’ve already put it off for 8 months, anyway.

Want to be a writer? Just keep telling yourself that writing checks and meeting minutes and grocery lists and to do notes is writing. Then quit the whining and get back to work.

I’m so glad today is February 1.

The Meeting

January 15, 2011 / jeanne / 14 Comments

For this week’s prompt, grab something out of your pantry and write a short piece – using all the words in the ingredients.

Broth.

That’s what they called themselves: Broth. No “The” to confuse alphabetization efforts, just pure and simple “Broth.” It was Chicken Swanson’s idea – both the name and the group itself. Chicken was always hatching some idea to bring people together.

“Let’s take stock,” she clucks. (Most people would’ve said “This meeting is called to order” but not Chicken. Things just drop right out of her mouth that leave folks nodding and smiling and sometimes scratching their heads.) “Let’s get right on down to business. Now what I want to know is: what are y’all doing to make plans for the new year? Tell me everything.”

From her place in the circle, Chicken looks everybody in the eye, then passes The Wish Bone (the Broth version of a talking stick) to Salt. “Salt, you first. What’s your plan?”

“I’m focusing on preservation this year,” Salt says. “I’m gonna’ scan my picturebooks and all my mess of papers and store them up there in the cloud. Then I’m gonna’ go on over to the bank and clean out my safety deposit box, whip them paper babies into some semblance of order. Why I’ll bet I can fill a trashcan with stuff I don’t need any more. Then once all that’s done – should take me till about August or so – I’m gonna’ set to darning some socks and patching the holes in my umbrella so it’ll last another year. Yep, preservation is the name of my game this year.”

Flavoring smiles and nods (which is probably why Salt hands The Wish Bond over to her). Flavoring’s mother was an odd thing, always scooting around town in skin-tight britches and a man’s XL t-shirt. That woman was forever motion, let me tell you, so when she gave birth, she named her baby girl Flavor because she knew – she just knew – her life was gonna’ taste different from now on. Then she up and added the “ing” as her salute to action. “I thought about getting organized this year,” Flavoring says, “but then good sense got the better of me and I decided to focus on accessorizing. Clothes and physical spaces, I’m talking about. Even my car – no fuzzy dice or pom-pom trim around the top, mind you – but I’m going to accessorize nevertheless. Maybe a glitzy new license plate holder. Or maybe I’ll just replace the burnt-out license plate bulb to you can read my special order “FLAV-O-RNG” license plate in the dark and call it done. Dext Rose, how about you go next, hon?”

Though named for both her mama (Rose) and her daddy (Dext, short for Dexter), Dext Rose was natural goodness feminine through and through. “Oh, I’m gonna’ work in my garden more this year,” Dext Rose purrs. “First I’m going to get me a pretty new pair of pink gardening gloves. I’d like some of those that are soft leather with that special gripping stuff on the inside. Do y’all know where I can get some like that with roses on ’em? I think I might get me one of those new short-handled shovels I saw in my catalog, too, and a new pair of pruning scissors and some root tonerizer. Then after I go shopping, I’m going straight over to get me a cutting of my Aunt Rene’s Opening Night rose and that floribunda number that nearly took over her backyard. Do y’all remember that bush I’m talking about? We used to stop by and cut us off a red rose every year on Mother’s Day. Till Mother died. Anyway, I’m going to take those cuttings home and dip ’em in some root tonerizer and stick ’em in a pot to see if I can’t root me some rosebushes. And in keeping with my rose theme, I’m watching the Rose Bowl Parade from start to finish. I’ll cook my blackeyed peas and turnipgreens before or after, but not during. And let me tell you: I’ve already got me some Rose Water Glycerin lotion that smells so good. Every time I open it up, I can’t help but think of Grandmother. She wore Jergen’s, you know, and it had a touch of rose water in it. Or was it glycerin? Oh, I sure wish I could get a cutting of her rosebush. So, my darlings, from start to finish, I hereby declare this The Year of the Rose.”

“Well, Dext Rose, I’ll put you down to provide table decorations at our luncheons,” Chicken says, always looking for ways to delegate, always planning ahead. Then, knowing how Dext Rose tends to go long when she gets to reminiscing about the past and planning the future, Chicken asks her “Now who do you want to go next?”

“I believe I’d like to hear from Yeast now,” declars Dext Rose with a big smile and a nod of her head for punctuation.

Yeast, who was a list maker and compartmentalizer from way back, vows to try her hand at creating a collage then extracting meaning from the images and words.

“Oh goodie,” says Dext Rose, clapping her perfectly manicured hands in front of her red-lipsticked mouth. “That reminds me of the time I went to the county fair and had my palm read. It was so much fun. I went with my friend, Too Percent. We call her that because she’s just not all there, if you know what I mean. Yeast, honey, do you think there’s a chance you might take up reading tea leaves next cause I’ve always wanted to have that done, you know. I’ll be your first customer.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Dext Rose. That’s way too much planning for me right now. Let’s just sit quietly and see what rises to the top. But enough about that. Now then, let’s hear what the Juicers are planning this year.”

Celery, Carrot, and Onion Juice are triplets, and we call them The Juicers for short cause they’re always together. I mean always. You see one of them, you see three of them, that’s just the way they are. I hasten to add, however, that though they may be triplets and though they enjoy being together, they are also three separate and distinct individuals. Because of her keen ability to see in the dark, Carrot is a sought-after companion for any haunted house or campout adventure. Whenever we go out at night, we rent a van and Carrot drives.

Onion is a writer, and I declare: that girl can make you cry all over the page. In fact, we have suggested more than once that she market each book with cute little tissue box cover made from fabric that goes along with the theme of the book.

Now Celery, well, I’m here to tell you: that girl is a mess. I don’t care where she is, Celery loves to perform, which makes her the Juice spokeswoman on account of the way Carrot and Onion are so quiet. When Yeast hands The Wish Bone to Celery, we don’t think a thing of it when Onion and Carrot automatically reach over to hold on to it, too, while Celery says, with characteristic flair, “The Juicers are pleased to announce – drumroll please – that this will be the year . . . to concentrate. Carrot – stand up, Carrot. Carrot is going to concentrate on becoming green. Let’s give her a round of applause. Thank you, Carrot. You may now be seated,” and as Carrot takes her seat, Celery turns to Onion, and with an ease that lets us know it’s happened before, grabs her under the arm and pulls her up off the sofa. With her arm around Onion’s shoulders, Celery beams and says, “Onion is going to concentrate on skins and tears. Isn’t that simply marvelous?” And with that, Celery initiates the applause for Onion and, after a respectfully short time, nods for her to return to her seat. “And last, but most assuredly not least, I, Celery, am going to concentrate on condiments.” And when she turns from side to side and makes a little bow, saying “Thank you, thank you,” we feel downright compelled to applaud for her, too.

And because nobody – not even Chicken herself – can think of a single thing to say after that, the meeting is quietly adjourned.

~~~
Key:
Pantry Item: Swanson Natural Goodness Chicken Broth
Ingredients: chicken stock, less than 2% of salt, flavoring, dextrose, yeast extract, celery juice concentrate, carrot juice concentrate, onion juice concentrate

Trease

January 8, 2011 / jeanne / 20 Comments

Having spent the first week of The Year slammed against the clock to tick things off the list and to fetch my brother from the airport as he returns from Afghanistan to spend 2 weeks with us, as I lay the stones and mattresses and pockets of possibility that will provide shelter and structure for 2011, I have written only lists – lists of things to do and get and remember.

I have missed you, me, us.

So this morning I commenced a scant trip through the wildes and happened upon a spark that I fanned, despite interruptions of dog and mate and food and child. Something fun and different for me (unless you count the inevitable pitfalls of memory and recall): fiction. And because I have plans that involve such ledge-jumping, I availed myself . . .

~~~ Your assignment is to write a short piece – fiction, non-fiction, poetry, whatevs – in which each sentence starts with a the next letter of the alphabet. Starting with “A.” So, yes, your finished product will consist of 26 sentences. ~~~

A Tree was born, a treeny triny Tree. Before the sun came out, in the vast silence of the moon, the Treeling began to stretch herself up from her mother’s roots, up, up, up into the moonlight. Callous philistrenes and thorny scrobbeites hogged the light and threatened to quash the youngsTreeneur before she had a chance to fledgle. Drondonemides peed on her and called it nourishment. Elvemites, tickled to be larger than something for a change, tromped on her. Flimones and flickites and fligmos landed on her for respite, then showed their (so-called) strength as they crudely pushed themselves off, thinking higher equals closer to the moon. Giantmongous birdithers made a game of balancing on the youthful, learning Tree.

Helicopters in search of a missing girlchild flew so close that the wind from their whirling blademonifiers momentarily buffeted the Treeling back into the safety of her mother’s rootnook. Icicles became water fountains as the night stretched itself out, and the Treeling licked them to quench thirst and keep her internal water system filled and flowing. Justreene, the Treelings’ mother, remained close by to provide as much shielding as possible. Kindness showed itself, even in the austere culture of winter, because Fledge (as she was now called) was watching for it. “Look for it,” Justreene told her Treechild, “look closely and you’ll see magicrous, wonderical things.”

Maneday came after the first frightfulous weekend of hunting season. Not the kind of hunting Justreene and Fledge were doing, mind you, these hunters were in search of animals to kill. Oh my goodweiss, Fledge lost count of how many soles she witnessed as hunters tromped over and around and beside her, sometimes missing her by a mere squeege. Pieces of paper were left along with other souvenirs of that weekend. “Queer that they actually believe others will find their trashscolomite useful,” Justreene murmured as she blew her mightiest clearing wind after their eventual departure. “Really,” she harumped then fell silently into the wind song.

Stumpette added her voice after a schiminisculle to sing along with Justreene’s wind. Trempet joined in to form a treeo of lullaby. Usuanda and her feathered flockure were soon chirping along in their own way. Vickets joined, too. Winds of harmony filled the night. Xenogenesis did not exist in the Land of Woulde that night as Fledge swanced to the sweettimonious melodies. Yellow sage added the light show, her flowers turning from redilicious to orangeimony and back to yellowsumptious.

“Zzzzzzzzzz,” hummed Fledge, completely content in knowing that she would always have this treemendous raffle to counsel, cajole, comfort, console, and cheer her.

### The Beginning ###

my phoemiliar

November 5, 2010 / jeanne / 5 Comments

as phoebe is to walking, i am to writing . . .

sometimes she skips
sometimes she gallops
sometimes she ambles.

sometimes she sticks to the prescribed path
sometimes
she veers to the right
or to the left
chasing something
that captures her attention or imagination.

sometimes
she is so totally captivated
that she just stops
and sits for a spell
to reflect and
take it all in.

sometimes
she ventures so far out into
the ten acre wood
to investigate
that she’s a mere
butterscotch dot.

sometimes it’s good enough
to celebrate;

other times, it’s best
to nap and dream of a better tomorrow.

but always, always, always
it’s better
with somebody riding shotgun.

with inspiration like this

November 2, 2010 / jeanne / 2 Comments

here’s yesterday’s photo:

and here’s today’s photo:

thedayafterjpg

notice anything different?

the flowers – the ones i specially selected for their bright color and various stages of bloom (thanks, angela. nothing gets past you, does it?) – well it seems the cats used them as hors d’oeuvres for last night’s frivolity. yep, they turned over the vase, nibbled on the flowers (something new? let’s eat it!), and consequently threw up. as luck will have it, either the floor or my desk isn’t level (i don’t think i’ve ever lived in a house that’s level or has square corners – is it even possible to create such a space? and really, who would want to, anyway?), so the water from the vase ran down and to the righthand side of my desk. you know: the place where my computer, my ipad, my camera, and my trusty little recorder reside.

because we all know that cats don’t like water, the cat who tasted (not gilded, of course, where’s the fun in that?) the lilies, went to the lefthand side of my desk to throw up. that’s where my journal lives.

now in my approaching-pollyanna mode, i can tell you that the vase didn’t break. neither did the glass nib and its holder. (i’m hearing the collective sigh of relief. thank you.) my camera happened to be laying on top of my little decorative notepad – the one i use to jot down special requests before dropping them into my special pewter bird vessel, so while my prayers might be soggy, there will still be photos. the computer always sits raised on a little thingie that allows air to circulate and keep it from overheating, and the ipad and recorder are in sturdy plastic cases – let’s call them electronic life preservers, shall we.

my journal? well, almost-pollyanna had to struggle a little bit with that one, but here’s what i’ve come up with: i throw up my thoughts, feelings, and words in there every single day, so, shoot, it can take a little cat vomit. or, put more succinctly: copy cat.

okay, here’s the truth: i didn’t really light the candle yesterday. i meant to, but i spent so much time deciding what and who i wanted as companions on this writing trek, that by the time i was settled, it was almost time to cook supper, and well, i just completely forgot to actually light the candle. so this morning after i tossed what was left of the flowers, dried everything off, and cleaned up my desk, i lit the candle and prepared to write.

but the candle wouldn’t stay lit.

i tried about forty-eleven times, and every single time, it looked like a little glowing ember then poof – it was gone, leaving nothing but an equally short-lived trail of smoke.

determined i would not lose every single writing companion, i used one of the creativity stones to scoop out a little well around the wick. (say it with me: resourcefulness is a type of creativity.) downright smug with my resourcefulness, i flicked the long-neck bic and lit the new-improvedly-exposed wick. this time it held a flame, oh, say 42 seconds. now i can write 750 words in 10 minutes, but that’s more of a brain dump. in other words, they aren’t quality words. i need time for that. time and a flame that sticks.

on the front, the label on the candle says it’ll burn for 50 hours (would that be 42 seconds divided into 50 hours? no wait, there has to be some multiplication first, right?). on the back, it says “because sometimes journeys to faraway places bring you that much closer to yourself”. under the circumstances, i find that downright disturbing.

~~~

ps: but hey, here’s a question for you: if the water from the vase prematurely seals the envelope, does that mean you still have to write the check and pay the bill?

ps2: now that i think about it, the right side of my desk could be called e for the electronics area, right? and let’s call the left side w for writing. i sit on the lower side, so we’ll call that s. (are you with me yet?) in the great geography of things, that leaves the upper edge of my desk, and to make this whole map metaphor complete, what say we call it n for nibble?

finally

November 1, 2010 / jeanne / 3 Comments

a vase i gave myself
years and years ago
sits next to
the glass nib
that my son gave me
years and years ago.

my daughter gave me
the inspiration candle
years and years ago.
it rests on a plate
that asks
“why not take responsibility or your greatness?”
a gift my friend laura gave me
years and years ago.

i found the two stones
said to enkindle creativity
on a nature walk i took
years and years ago.

my constant companion phoebe,
a gift our children gave us
years and years ago,
stations herself at the windows
to keep
trespassers and intruders
at bay.

the painting in the background
that makes me smile and remember
important things
is something my husband gave me
years and years ago.

today i started writing a book
i first imagined
years and years ago.

sometimes it just takes a while
for everything to come together.

or maybe i’m just a
late bloomer.

taking 10

October 27, 2010 / jeanne / 1 Comment

okay, folks. i’m taking the night off cause honestly, i’m getting tired of hearing myself talk.

plus i need time to immerse myself in my everything-you-need-to-know-about-how-to-write-fiction magazine cause i signed up for the nanowrimo challenge (it starts in 4 days) and plan to try my hand at fiction.

not that i don’t indulge in a little fiction every now ‘n then, memory being what it is and all. and of course now that i’ve put my name on the official dotted line, i’m wondering if my idea is more like a short story than a book (i can’t bring myself to say “novel”) – shoot, it may be little more than a blog post – but i have committed to penning some 2000 words every. single. day. in november . . . okay, that’s enough. i’m starting to glisten with the enormity of it all.

tomorrow, though, tomorrow i feel another story time coming on.