writing

Friend

letter_f_erteFriend.

Fun, fellowship, faith, frolic, fantastic, fair, fond, forthright, feel, fulfill, fabulous, fealty, felicity, favored, flourish, forgiveness, familiarity, fruitful, festive, frank, fortifying, fraternal, fascinating, free, formidable, familial, facilitate, flexible, folksy, funny. Faithful.

A true blessing…

Talking, eating, playing, praying, saying, hugging, listening, learning, daring, dreaming, urging, cooking, texting, calling, running, speaking, nurturing, crying, whispering, mending, holding, caring, encouraging, teaching, trusting, accepting, being, cherishing, laughing, living. Sharing.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
― C.S.Lewis

Edelweiss

eEdelweiss.

I usually say daisies are the friendliest flowers, but for today, I’m going to say edelweiss is the friendliest flower.

Because it starts with E, and I wasn’t going to pick a weirdly exotic word although now that I think of it, I might have had some fun sending you, dear reader, off on a wild goose chase.

Or maybe not. Instead, I’ll regale you with a mushy little love story. Mine.

When John and I were married, he was serving in the US Army in what was then West Germany. We lived in a beautiful little town, Bamberg, and all of Western Europe was our playground.

Austria was just a short drive away, and we went often. The Alps, you know, ARE RIGHT THERE!

And edelweiss grows in the Alps.

So my honey picked a lot of edelweiss for me to put in my hair. It was very long in those days, curly and black. I looked like Yvonne de Carlo.

And he looked like Christopher Plummer.

Do you know where this is going?

Yes.

He often sang Edelweiss to me.

 

edelweiss

Dare

dDare.

As in, double-dog dare. Only, the adult version of it.

When I was twenty and first read T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I was struck by the speaker’s question, “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

Do I dare? Do I dare to disturb the comfort of my own little universe, the universe I have carefully measured out, not in coffee spoons, but in falsely created parameters and limits that I don’t cross…because, like Prufrock, I am afraid?

Afraid of going back to school.

Afraid of writing something too honest.

Afraid, maybe, of success.

I keep coming across a quotation from another favorite writer, Mark Twain.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Today, I will Dare to Discover.

 

Chocolate

cChocolate.

Because reasons.

Is there a tastier treat? Richer? More decadent?

Maybe… but it’s my C, so I’m going with the frothy drink of Aztec kings and Spanish noblemen instead of my usual cup of coffee on this cold morning. (betcha thought I’d go with Coffee today, right?)

I’m siding with the Hershey company and the most brilliant product ever created: The Hershey Kiss.

I’m remembering the red and green blotches in my sweaty palms when I was a kid, belying company claims that M & M’s melt in your mouth, not in your hands.

Chanuka gelt shaken in its little mesh bag, chocolate bunnies delightfully decapitated, the Nestlé Quik bunny lamenting that he can’t drink it slow.

Really, what’s not to love?

Less is more with a little drizzle of chocolate over homemade New York-style cheesecake.

More is more when nothing else will do but a raspberry-filled Ghirardelli dark chocolate bar.

Eat your hearts* out caviar lovers, coffee connoisseurs, Marie Antoinettes of the world and your cakes.

I have chocolate. And today, in honor of the A to Z Challenge, I’m sharing.

* just an interesting little fact that the Aztecs did in fact rip out hearts. 

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details from a lithograph I owned many years ago, The Alphabet Suite, by Erté.

Become

bBecome.

I’m a work in progress.

At this point in my life I realize that I have more years under my belt than what I have left to live. Let’s hope there’s a little wisdom behind some of the things I’ve seen and done, right? If nothing else, I won’t be repeating some of my more boneheaded mistakes…though there is the danger that I will find some new ways to be a goober.

Sobering? Depressing?

No. It’s actually kind of inspiring.

It’s one of those things that comes to me in moments of clarity — I’m not yet the person I can be — not because I feel like some grand failure, but because I am full of potential.

I ask myself daily, what are you going to be when you grow up?

I have the experience to see how all of the events in my life have built upon each other. It makes me hopeful for a future that will bring these experiences together for something amazing and unexpected. Even if I’m the only one to see it.

But I doubt that — that I’m the only one to see it. I feel God’s hand in my life, so the unknown is an adventure, not a source of fear.

I just need to remember to breathe.

________

details from a lithograph I owned many years ago, The Alphabet Suite, by Erté.

Aspire

AI’ve hit upon a new plan for writing, a jumpstart for my creativity that I stumbled across last year, much too late to participate. And then, here we are, next year. It’s called the A to Z Challenge, a brilliant idea from Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out. Thanks, Arlee, for being a bright note of inspiration!

So this first word, aspire, was both an easy choice, and a difficult one. Easy for me to go with the first definition, to aspire to something, to seek, to attain, perhaps to accomplish.

I want that. I want to accomplish great things. I have a few books roiling around in my head that I need to get down on paper. I’d like to travel, not with an overnight bag to an endless string of cities as I’ve been doing lately, but to one place where I can stay long enough to discover where the locals drink coffee. And I want a miracle or two, though that’s probably more of a hope than an aspiration.

Which leads to the next interpretation, which properly comes from the word origins rather than a definition. To aspire is to breathe. Oh, how I need to breathe. I find myself holding my breath all the time. Like I’m suspending time by not breathing, but that’s not fooling anybody, least of all time. I need to breathe in — and out — and back in again. I need to pay closer attention around me. I need to be present in the present.

I suppose it all begins with a great big cleansing breath. Join me, won’t you, for the next several weeks, as I weave and wend my way through the alphabet, aspiring to be a little creative and, perhaps, a little more alive as I discover what’s on my mind, one letter at a time.

________

I’ll be illustrating these posts with details from a lithograph I owned many years ago, The Alphabet Suite, by Erté.

finished…until the next thing

So I wrote the speech. Yeah. Done.

I’d say I’m done in by it, but really, not the case. Wrote it. Shared it with a few trusted peeps who’d tell me I’m full of it if I am.

Hmmm. Actually, they didn’t tell me I’m full of it. I would have told me I’m full of it.

So now I’m walking around the house cleaning and delivering the speech. I gotta practice, you know. It’s all about the delivery. So far the dog is unimpressed.

photo-8

This has been a good lesson for me. It put me outside my comfort zone. That’s important because I teach composition to people who are outside their comfort zones. It was refreshing for me to feel a little bit of empathy. I’m going to say this has changed the way I’m teaching….It’s true. I used this in my classes this week. It made a little bit of a difference in my students. It didn’t change what they had to do, of course, but it changed my delivery.

Always learning, I am.

yoda

How’d you like that little reference?

Anyway, that’s mostly what I do. Help people find their voices. Help people tell their stories and share their ideas. If you do that, too, you might enjoy this TED Talk. I should have watched it before I wrote my speech for next Wednesday’s event. Lucky for me, I have to write another one for Tuesday, and that one might just be a little more important for me.

on writer’s block and performance art

blockI have to write a speech. It has me in knots, not because I’m afraid of speeches, but because every time I sit in front of the computer or journal or notebook or pile of scrap paper, or, for heaven’s sake, a napkin, I get a brain cloud.

It’s pretty annoying, as folks are starting to ask what I’m going to say. I don’t think it’ll fly if I respond with, “Oh, I’ll let the Spirit move me when I get up to the podium.”

Ha. I could do it, too. Get up there and just talk, I mean. That doesn’t scare me nearly as much as having to prepare a speech. I don’t even get a teleprompter. It seems to work for some people. But then again, I’m not running for public office.

What I most want to do is avoid the helpful people…people I’d no more allow to put words in my mouth than cut my bangs. They are everywhere. And they scare me. Ha!

Not really. I’m mostly amused, by them, my predicament, the fact that ordinarily I never shut up and now I need to dig for words.

I think it’s a good thing. I feel like I’ve forgotten how to write. I’ve been dwelling in the underbelly of the writer’s world these past many months — writing very dry, very boring, very technical reports. Stephen King would have a thing or three to say about my overuse of adverbs. I’ve replaced poetry with formula –replaced the beauty of a well-turned phrase with passive voice so as not to offend.

I need to find my writer’s heart, and I better find it quick. The clock is ticking.

it’s a flannery kinda morning

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When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God’s business.
Flannery O’Connor