Breakthrough…

invisible 1

 

A day comes, if you’re lucky and it’s true, when you see that

You never really know what’s going on

Though others seem to have it by osmosis.

No worries…

Though the dawning knowledge that you don’t…quite…fit…ANYwhere

Is a gift of liberation not accompanied by explanatory text –

It rather defies description.

Quickly you see the grace you’ve been given for navigating

Tricky waters and tests of loyalty – 

  When you’re mostly invisible you get to slide.

That’s when the gift becomes the knowledge that you belong

Only to yourself

And you need to know only your Truths.

You can forget the rest, and *fitting* is vastly overrated.

Or so I hear.

 

JSmith 09/30/2018

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On losing your spark…

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Yes, it’s Monday, which is no biggie since I’m retired, but there are so many of them and they relentlessly click past while sneering at my lack of productivity. It’s demoralizing, not to put too maudlin a point on it, especially since I know the Monday voices are absolutely right.

I was in a conversation thread last week about losing your spark – apparently it’s a thing right now, who knew? Mine died the night of November 8, 2016, and that’s all I’m going to say in that regard except that it’s proving to be a long road back. In last week’s conversation, a beautiful friend who knows whereof she speaks counseled starting small, one thing at a time, racking up little successes, continuing to move forward. She’s right. It works, even when you know you’re still swimming in molasses.

It just got easier. This morning, October 30, 2017, the sense of being suspended in a state of limbo is gone for the first time in eleven months, which is once again all I’m going to say, except that Kim told me at lunch “You look adorable today. You look like you’re feeling better.”

I know it’s still a long road ahead, but I’m content for now just to feel the spark again. I have a project that I want and need to finish and, like other things, the process has suffered from my lack of ability to engage. So while it feels like somebody’s home again, I think I’ll get at that.

Wishing each of you sunshine, clarity, and peace today…

 

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Songwriters are good at this…

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Haiku by Kim the night before the eclipse:

the soft suffocation of
a hot august night
earth heaves and tumbles with life 
.
.
one bat two bat fast bat gone
silent sonar song
masters of the inky night
.
.
many paths are crossed today
astral planes above
we achieve totality
.
.
Kim Smith 8/20/2017

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Hurting people hurt people.

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Do you know how it feels to want to hurt someone? Hurt them so bad they can never get over it but they still have to live life in their own skin? You do, I know you do, because almost no one skates by without incurring collateral damage that nobody ever apologizes for. I loathe how powerless I am when events happen and life heads south and the person who instigated every bit of it is untouchable and not affected in any way by my heartache, indeed could not be less aware of my existence.

The fact that someone who will never lay eyes on me (it is to be hoped) holds the power of life and death over everyone I love seems deeply unjust. Unless we begin life as a proverbial Bad Seed we grow up wanting to do right and BE right. And then in some of our lifetimes a cataclysmic event changes us and sends us down paths we never would have chosen on our original trajectory. Inevitably, the world around us also swirls and heaves and splits at the seams, making it a challenge to find our footing again after the storm subsides.

My loved ones – a bigly number of people – were doing just fine until monsoon season hit, and it angers me that the current atmosphere is causing personal safety to once again be in question. It’s anger from way down, and it’s a new thing, and it scares me a little because I can’t afford to morph into a nasty bitter old woman, so my choice is to laugh at everything and everybody until life seems real again. Because right now – and I want to be very careful how I say it – this is horseshit.

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Good morning, sunshine…

anthonyjdangelo1

is sunshine magic

does it always inspire you

does it give you strength?

JSmith 02/17/2017

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Just write…

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just enough sunshine

which is all the wide blue sky

to chat with my muse

JSmith 11/01/2016

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Autumn Light

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leaves turn and drift down

letting shards of light pierce limbs

autumn blazes through

JSmith 10/02/2016

 

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Headed back…

cwriting

 

The writing of the words and the telling of the stories has taken a back seat for the past few weeks to Kim’s duel with pneumonia. At this point he’s discouraged over his lack of bounce, his ongoing weight loss, and the fact that he’s weak-kneed and not very interested in the world around him, but progress is finally underway despite all outward evidence to the contrary.

Meanwhile, back at the computer, Mama’s muse seems to have gone on hiatus and is hopefully enjoying a white-sand beach where the water is clear and warm – it could only benefit us all.

And now it’s Monday, the accepted time for new beginnings, new resolve, new dedication to the task at hand, which is to write the words every day, dive back into the projects large and small, stay tuned to what’s inside and less aware of the extraneous. It’s painful not to write, so I can never stray far.

Pretty sure I’ll eat these words, but a small part of me is ready for fall and winter with their coziness and quiet – it’s all wonderfully conducive to writing, reading, thinking, planning, and sleeping – but none of it will wait that long, so wish me well ignoring the distractions. It’s still summer for a while yet…where’s my white-sand beach?

 

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Whimsy…who doesn’t need some?

A psych-out when I start feeling weighed down by nonsense is to “brighten the corner where I are.” It’s the equivalent of Spring Cleaning without the lifting, bending, and sundry other exercise I like to refer to as work. My desk and I are good friends, so of course I ignore it and treat it like crap most of the time, but there always comes a day when the windows have to be flung open and the detritus swept away. Today is that day – AGAIN – in my world, and lucky you, I love to (over)share.

We start with our big honkin’ desktop because EYEBALL FEAST EVERY TIME WE SIT DOWN HERE. You can immediately see what a crucial first step this is, besides which everything from this point hinges on it. (Gah, I always hope my readers are note takers.) Nobody else’s desktop will suffice – it must speak to me, personally, in some way, and most tell me “You are freakin’ nuts, lady” which is when I know I’ve found THE ONE.

Today’s springboard, our dominant image:

wallup.net

That’s merely the start, although admittedly an auspicious one. Now that we have an arresting vista in front of us at all times, we must upload that same image as our Facebook cover picture. Done. And, since we use a sweet add-on called Facebook Purity, we get to upload a background image for all of Facebook. Furthermore, since the name of today’s game is *cheer,* we’re using this one:

HD-Plain-Yellow-Background-with-Flowers

Is that not an enjoyable little kick in the shorts over and over? When you spend a lot of time somewhere it’s powerful to make it yours.

Next up is our Facebook blog page, which obviously has to coordinate with the overall theme we’re developing here, and this will do quite nicely as our cover photo:

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All of our Facebook pages share a background, which is working out swimmingly, as you can see. We are ON A ROLL, boys and girls. Add this same image as the header for our blog page, tweak the background, and violas!! Moving on…

What shall we do next? We have choices:

  1. Two Gmail accounts whose non-coordinating backgrounds are piteously crying “Pick me, pick me!”
  2. The big loud Twitter header, or is that just my monitor? But yeah, there’s that.
  3. And we have to go get a new Chrome Theme.

Oh, haha, I forgot, this is my page, I choose! We’re doing the Twitter header next and there’s an outstanding reason for that – IT’S GONNA BE IMAGE #1 UP THERE AGAIN! See how simple this is? See a pattern here? Give a shit?

So now we’ll tackle the whiny Gmail accounts. Okay, pay attention because this is where this stuff gets tricky.

WE’RE GOING TO USE TWO OF THE SAME BACKGROUNDS WE’VE ALREADY UPLOADED. If I didn’t crack myself up I’d have no fun whatsoever. And I did try to warn you up top via words like whimsy and psych – which is like a twin or something to psycho, right?

And here’s where you get in on the fun – you get to decide which two of the three backgrounds above you want to use for your mail! You know, when you redesign it all according to what speaks to you.

Okay, all we have to do is find a new Chrome Theme and we’re set – there are a million of ’em and it’s fun. This one’s perfect and I’m happy. Cheery, even. For all the reasons.

Screenshot 2016-07-28 at 03.27.00 PM

Hope you are, too.

 

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ZEN beats PPT

 

Interesting phenomenon in progress: just as too much of social media is disintegrating into a sticky morass of politics, racism, and religious conflict and I’m wondering who the hell I’ll hang with after the mud dries and the dust settles, a door opens – one of the best kinds, totally unexpected and unanticipated. Said door is an invitation to blog for a site whose aim is to provide new platforms for current voices. Their bonafides having checked out, I’m in.

That’s three weeks ago, and my sticky news feed is increasingly being populated by writing sites, blogging sites, photography sites, publishing sites, helpful friendly contact with writers of every stripe (not the porn dudes, they can’t find the trail), and it’s the best attitude adjustment I’ve happened across in months. Nobody’s been purged, blocked, unfriended, unfollowed, or hidden (recently), I’m just so busy talking with friendlies in the world of words, the spunk is quite organically melting right off my page, who knew?

Venturing further into the writing community is proving timely on a purely personal level as well – in a week when nothing at all seems to be going smoothly (an aberration for us), when there are more questions than answers, when our pitiful attempts to garner information come smack back in our faces RETURN TO SENDER every time, and both of us are entertaining morose thoughts of a worm & gopher-guts diet…whew…new friends to save the day (for me). Not that all my old friends aren’t doing a bang-up job, promise.

So yeah, we’re just over here speaking of books and blogs and …

“… shoes- and ships-
And sealing wax-
Of cabbages and kings-
And why the sae is boiling hot-
And whether pigs have wings.”

“Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.”*

…and just like that, my prickly, peevish, testy news feed is Zen AF and feels all homey and shit. Guess who took it full PPT on everybody in the first place? Should I write that down somewhere?

 

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*Jabberwocky, Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

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You, too, can haiku…

“A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count.” That is hot off the interwebs, kids, so I’m giving it my No Housekeeping Seal of Approval and we’ll roll with it.

Unless we want to consider this generous input from Be Happy Zone:

haiku

See what I’m sayin’?  EVERYBODY CAN DO THIS!  So EVERYBODY DO THIS, OKAY? Here, I’ll get us started…

 

pain is not a friend

taking my chubby lumpkins

to the pool for cure

JSmith 5/24/2016

 

*My internal rhythm is partial to 5 7 5, but I promise to experiment with other patterns next time. SHOW ME WHAT YA’ GOT! (Post in Comments.)

 

 

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Rain or shine…

writing-desk2

 

days sunny or gray

pass like water rolling on

inspiration dry

JSmith 5/23/2016

 

 

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Remembering a writing mentor who probably never knew it…

This is wonderful. My friend Ned Hickson wrote it and I stole it to share with you.

 

 

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A mentor every writer should’ve been lucky enough to have.

Anyone who follows my weekly Nickel’s Worth on Writing knows Publisher’s Digest and The Master of Horror® Stephen King are frequently among those offering accolades touting the value an…

Source: Remembering a writing mentor who probably never knew it

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Maddie

Untitled

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I don’t remember dancing …

Did we dance on Tuesday?  I don’t think we danced on Tuesday …

It isn’t an insignificant omission, is the thing.  Because life really IS a dance and if we let the silliness fall off our cracker even once, we could be setting ourselves up for a lifetime of resting bitch face.  Yeah, see, we meant to have fun but we forgot.  And then our faces got bored with smiling and now we feel powerless to, you know, like, fix any of that.

Seriously.  Okay, the rules have changed then — we’ll just dance ANY old day and preferably EVERY day, and even if we happen to forget once in a while, RBF won’t have time to set in!  It’s important, and I’m thinking this could be a breakthrough.  Register your opinion in comments!

 

beautiful story

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