NaBloPoMo

NaBloPoMo Day 13, Part 2: Art Threading Through Life

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Today’s prompt: Put your music player on shuffle and write down the first three songs that play and what your initial thought is.

Pandora Channel – “Aladdin (Broadway)”

I am a huge lover of music and how the lyrics make me feel, what they remind me of, make me think about, etc. It’s almost impossible to separate my thoughts on a song from its lyrics.

  1. “No One Is Alone” – Into the Woods (2014)

Both: People make mistakes.
Baker: Fathers,
Cinderella: Mothers,
Both: People make mistakes,
Holding to their own,
Thinking they’re alone.
Cinderella: Honor their mistakes
Baker: Fight for their mistakes
Cinderella: Everybody makes
Both: One another’s terrible mistakes.
Witches can be right, Giants can be good.
You decide what’s right you decide what’s good
Cinderella: Just remember:
Baker: [Echo] Just remember:
Both: Someone is on your side
Jack, LRRH: OUR side
Baker, Cinderella: Our side–
Someone else is not
While we’re seeing our side
Jack, LRRH: Our side..
Baker, Cinderella: Our side–
All: Maybe we forgot: they are not alone.
No one is alone.
Someone is on your side
No one is alone.

I have never seen Into the Woods live, nor have I yet watched Disney’s cinematic rendition of it (even though I actually own it), though I did buy and watch the production with Bernadette Peters as The Witch with Ben for Valentine’s when we were dating. This is his favorite musical. He played the Baker in high school and has been in love with this challenging musical ever since. As such. I have learned a good number of the songs out of a sheer desire to share them with him. This song touches my heart in its reminder that we are never really alone, no matter how we feel we may be. There is always someone who is feeling similarly or who may understand you far more than you expect.

“Part of Your World” – The Little Mermaid

Look at this trove, treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Looking around here you’d think
Sure, she’s got everything

I’ve got gadgets and gizmos a plenty
I’ve got whozits and whatzits galore
You want thingamabobs? I’ve got twenty!
But who cares? No big deal,
I want more!

This was the first Disney song I remember memorizing and identifying with. I’m sure my friends thought I had everything a girl could want. But I did want more. I wanted real relationships, real friends, real adventures, a chance to see and affect the world. As I have grown, my dreams have tempered some but I still desire those deep relationships, friendships, adventures, and the chance to do good in the world around me.

“Almost There” – The Princess and the Frog

Mama! I don’t have time for dancing!
That’s just gonna have to wait a while
Ain’t got time for messing around
And it’s not my style
This old town can slow you down
People taking the easy way
But I know exactly where I’m going
Getting closer and closer every day

This was me when I was in school. When I headed off to college at seventeen, adults would frequently (and jokingly, I know) ask if I was going to get my MRS degree. It might have been a joke, but I felt my intelligence and ambition were insulted by it. So I would look them in the eye and say, “No, that’s not the point of college.” I had goals to achieve, ambitions to fulfill. And, true to my word, I earned my Bachelor’s degree in English Education and Master’s degree in Literature before I walked down the aisle with Ben.

NaBloPoMo Day 12, Part 2: A Lady’s Journal Excerpted

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Author’s Note: This is my journal entry from today as I sat alone in Panera Bread during lunchtime. It’s very stream of consciousness, I admit, but sometimes I just need to let my mind flow.

12 November 2015

Today is a most frabjous day! Today is my day out! A few hours all by myself! The little miss is out to luncheon with her grandparents so I can cavort by myself for a little bit. Of course, it’s only a few hours but I will take it!

So here I sit beside one of Panera’s big picture windows, watching the leaves dance around in the gales outside. Ladies bustle to and fro in lovely long sweaters, coats, and cardigans (of which I am one). Old friends are catching up at either table across from me. I just did my best Cho Chang expression and asked for a cheese pastie [though it was not a true pastie and just a cheese pastry, really]. And I am blessedly alone!

I am pretty in pastels and knee-high boots that lace in the back. My hair isn’t quite the fairy tale that it was yesterday, for being tousled and flirted with by nimble, windy fingers. (I am forcing myself to slowly down as I write this. There’s no need to rush right now.) I just watched a very handsome man with a handsome scarf exit his car and enter the restaurant. I just want to observe and record the world around me suddenly, the way I used to. It feels and tastes of winter outside, as if the Old Man’s reindeer are kicking up to be off on their heels. The air inside bites of too much cold for indoors right now. The sky is close and grey, thick like my favorite blanket. I just watched a leaf pirouette on the tip of its stem. My phone battery has run out; I really need a new one. That might be my Christmas request for this year. I find myself wishing to hear voices in the din, voices I know. I miss long lunches and longer conversations. Life can really get in the way sometimes, but I would never wish to change it. Too much risk and ingratitude in the wishing.

NaBloPoMo Day 11, Part 2: Moments in Lines

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Tonight I felt like writing, though I wasn’t sure exactly what to write. Thankfully, I have a handy-dandy 500 Writing Prompts book that a friend gave me two weeks ago. So I flipped it open and picked a few prompts that called to me.

= = =

What makes you feel invincible?

A hot shower. Believe it or not, a hot shower almost always feels like it restores my humanity. Better yet, a hot shower and full moisturizing routine. Better still, a hot shower with a decadent body wash and a rub down with lavender baby oil gel immediately after I get out. When I am dry, soft, and smelling sweet, I feel as if I am armored and ready to take on the world.

In what ways are you resilient?

I believe that I am resilient in my refusal to go hard at the difficulties in the world. I dislike the person I am when I become hard, so I won’t. Being hard and being resilient are not the same thing.

I am resilient in that I will always try to get up and try again tomorrow. I fail. I fail a lot. I fail in big ways. But tomorrow is always a new day and a chance to try again. To say I’m sorry to those whom I have wronged. To ask forgiveness for my lack of love, kindness, and grace. It is always a new day to try again to be the person I was created to be, fully that person.

Now, I don’t know if this makes me resilient or just crazy but I have found, through different circumstances, that unless I am told (or it is implicated quite strongly) that a someone no longer interested in having me their life or wants anything to do with me, I will often keep reaching and trying to keep the communication lines open. Sometimes this is a painful course of action and sometimes it is a fruitful one. Sometimes those relationships work out and sometimes they don’t. But I know myself well enough to know that this is my usual course of action.

NaBloPoMo Day 7: Thoughts are Made of Single Words

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The prompt for today asks me to write about two words or phrases that make me laugh. Truthfully, I cannot think of very many that I find that funny but I can think of several that are very profound and have stuck with me over the years.

One of them is one by Eleanor Roosevelt: “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” It might seem a little pessimistic but, honestly, it turned the tide of my mental talk in many ways. I cannot tell you where I first hear or read this quote, but it stuck with me, even if the proper words were lost and all that remained with me was the idea.

I spent a most of the first half of my life living in fear or people’s bad opinion, especially in my community. I truly and honestly believed that if people, including my parents, ever found out that I wasn’t the perfect girl they believed me to be, my life would be over. In a way, I think that fear was compounded by the thought that, if I didn’t ever leave the island and something happened that proved me painfully human, I would be stuck there. Stuck in the disappointment, stuck in the embarrassment, stuck in the whispers, stuck in all of it. Leaving for college afforded me the opportunity to forge my own life, my own path, my own reasons for believing as I believe and living as I live. Not for someone else’s approval but for God’s and, honestly, my own.

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Another quote that has stuck with me is one by C.S. Lewis: “Do not shine so that others can see you. Shine so that through you others can see Him [God].” I have a ministry and purpose in life and I have been given the gifts to accomplish that purpose.  I want to reach out to the heart that is lonely or lost, that needs encouragement, that needs to know that someone is there and cares about them, regardless of sex, creed, belief system, skin color, whatever (theirs or mine). But I don’t do it because I want people to admire me. No. I do what I do because I want people to see God and His love for them. If I can be a vehicle for such love, I am all for that.

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NaBloPoMo Day 4, Part 2: The Little Candlemaker

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This is based on a roleplay character that I played for a total of five hours. I still feel like I could have lived her up a little more and, apparently, she agrees, because she has stuck around, poking her head out of her room in my imagination and whispering to me.

= = =

“Little Candlemaker”. She didn’t mind the title. It was usually said pleasantly, with the smile of one happy to see her. A few times it had been murmured in soft tones, a hint of pleading and want layered beneath. It really hadn’t even bothered her when the gruff old barber had called  her “little match girl”, which she knew was purposefully meant to be annoying; it was just his way. She had usually repaid it with an affected roll of her shoulder as if piqued, to satisfy his attempt.

On average, however, she did not mind the byname “little candlemaker”. It amused her on most days and she rarely distributed another thought about it.

But when one man said it, when one man called her “little candlemaker”, she found herself taking pause. Her entire form’s reaction was different when the words rolled from his lips. Skin warmed, heart thudded, gooseflesh popped up on her arms. But why was that? She had known him all her life and he had never glanced her way a second time.

But now…now things were different. Secrets were out in the open, the threads of the village drawn tighter, stronger. All were considered as family, all considered protected. Now, everyone knew.

She worked the magic of the flame without fear of reprisal and assured of protection. She filled the village homes with light and peace and faith. In the flickering blue hearts of the flames set to her candles, people breathed in calm and amity. She worked the little magic in her blood for the good of her fellows and not just herself, turning her own fortune around.

And she repaid the charity shown her in the only way she had at her disposal. Their home, their livelihood, the seat of their power was filled with her candles, burning brightly into the night, the wicks never burning down, the fat, intricately-carved tapers growing shorter far more slowly than one should expect. She never requested anything. They had saved her life, saved all their lives. She had had nothing, been in fear for her life, and their family, his family, had saved her. He had promised her that nothing would happen, that what she feared wouldn’t come to pass. And it hadn’t. She would repay them, repay him in his lady’s stead, as best she could for the rest of the days that her nimble hands could dip, form, and carve wax into light.

And she wouldn’t admit to herself how her gaze lingered on him. Not at first. How she found herself more and more often at the tavern, spending time with others with the hope of passing words with him. She gave him smiles, though she was unable to hide the color that would spread delicately over her cheeks. She knew his loyalty to his family, to his kin, the prevalence of their family line. She harbored no hope in that vein.

And yet she nursed the little spark within. Held it in her hands and brought it close to warm her like the first kiss of sunlight to appear on the horizon.

"Girl with a candle. Self portrait" by Zinaida Serebriakova (1911)

“Girl with a candle. Self portrait” by Zinaida Serebriakova (1911) . http://www.wikiart.org/en/zinaida-serebriakova/girl-with-a-candle-self-portrait-1911

NaBloPoMo, Day 2: Written on My Body (Or Not)

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I don’t have any tattoos. It’s just not for me. I have nothing against anyone who does, however. In fact, I have seen some absolutely beautiful body art in my years. I have researched tattoos for roleplay characters.

My favorite of said characters is probably Daenara Heron, a circus snake/belly dancer vampire who had a cherry tree tattoo. The trunk and roots wrapped up and around her left hip and the branches spread out in full blossom over her back and shoulder blades. She saw it as strength and beauty, grounded in strong roots. She had been born Roma, her identity rooted deeply in her family and their traditions. The tattoo reminds her of them and her history, even though those near and dear to her have all long since passed away.

NaBloPoMo 2014 Day 30: The End is the Beginning

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Here we are at the end of November and the end of NaBloPoMo 2014 (for me, at least). As I sit here on my couch, my newly-downloaded Infinite Rain app filling my ears with rain, thunder, and soft chimes, I find myself stymied as to what I can write to simultaneously sum up this month and move me on to the next. I have enjoyed the exercise and “muscle”-building of writing (or at least posting) something every day and it is a practice that I really want to keep up. I want writing to become a discipline and not just a hobby.

Wordsworth admonished, “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart,” and I truly feel as though that is what I do when I write. Whether fiction or non, story or reflection, what I write is attached to my heart, breathed of it, part of it. The nonfiction pieces are infinitely scarier to me, though. Those are my personal thoughts, feelings, and opinions. That’s my soul right there, laid wide and bare for anyone – family, friends, stranger, comrades, critics – to read, enjoy, despise, pass judgement, give encouragement, or comment on.

Articles like “Discussing the Other” and “The Weight of Silence”, in their deep vulnerability and honesty, are terrifying to me. They terrify me because of the probability of their divergence from the opinions of others who mean a great deal to me, of striking a heart too hard, or touching a raw nerve, and, therefore, the possibility of their inciting the anger, hurt, or disappointment of those particular people. Even at the age of thirty-one, it is difficult to divest myself of the importance of others’ opinions. My husband once said, “You don’t worry about people not liking you. What worries you far more is someone being upset with you.” And it’s true. Believe me, it isn’t as bad as it used to be. Not that many years ago, I truly think I seriously would have chosen to have my head cut off before allowing others who had known me all my life to see me as less than. Less than perfect, less than what they had always assumed me to be, less than the example that I should be. In order words, I would have rather had the earth swallow me up than take a chance at being vulnerable and see looks of disappointment reflected back at me. I feared it all the time, guarded my vulnerabilities and shortcomings with a frightening vigilance, though, truthfully, probably not as closely as I thought I did. As an adult now, I cannot kid myself in the idea that someone didn’t know, that my mom or dad didn’t see that I wasn’t perfect. And you know what? They loved me anyway. The people who are steadfast in my life always have. They love me no matter my shortcomings, no matter my failings, no matter my vulnerable humanity. And so I write. I write as honestly as I may, speak as I need to, across this medium and others. If the results are negative, then I shall deal with them as they come and, hopefully, consider it practice in graceful reactions and healthy conflict resolution.

I write far better than I speak. In the time that it takes my words to travel from my brain to my fingers to either write or type them out, there seems to be a bit more of a profound filtration system than the path they take from my brain to my mouth. Of course, with writing, there is the benefit of editing and revising before we hit Send, Post, Tweet, Publish, etc. Writing enables me to take extra time before “speaking” to see how my words look before I “say” them and that is a benefit and a boon. I am trying to practice something similar in my verbal conversations, taking necessary moments before speaking from an unglued place. After all, HOW I say something can make or break what I have to say, regardless of how true or honest it might be.

Over the past four and a half years, this blog has become a place for those paper bullets of my brain, my thoughts and wonderings, my heart and soul to be poured out, parsed out, taken apart to be analyzed, and pieced together in a coherent whole. You, gentle reader, have been exceedingly patient with me as I have walked and continue to walk this path of bettering my art and, simultaneously, myself. So thank you for that. And I hope that, even just now and again, I can write something here that will help your heart, harmonize with your voice, and make happy your soul.

Thank you for sticking with me through this National Blog Posting Month, and here is more steps along the path and adventures along the way. Cheers!

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NaBloPoMo 2014 Day 27: A Blessing for You, Dear Reader

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My Thanksgiving table – 2014

Round this table ere we broke our bread,

To speak our thanks we bowed our heads.

Not from fear or guilt or guile,

But from acknowledgement of the worthwhile.

Jobs to feed and homes to warm,

Food to nourish and hands to hold through the storm.

We are grateful for each and every gift,

This day set aside to detail that list.

This is simple, not grand or unique,

Just a truth I need to speak.

Your presence, dear reader, is a dream for me.

My words, my heart laid here for you to see.

You reading and taking what I say to heart

Has meant the world to me from the very start.

Thank you for each moment, each comment, each like.

I appreciate the time that you give to this is corner of my life.

I wish you the best, every blessing, every gift.

May these days – holidays and non – be your needed lift.

 

NaBloPoMo 2014 Day 26: I Feel Like Sorry

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(Cross posted from my Mommy Blog – “I Have a Forever“)

There are days – many days – when I feel like I should say I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I’m constantly tired and only good for sitting or lying on the couch after Elizabeth goes to bed.

I’m sorry that I get distracted by my toddler when you’re talking (whoever you are, whether in person or on the phone). I really am listening to you and interested in what you have to say.

I’m sorry that portions of my house are messy. I can only do so much in a day and I just didn’t get to that one room.

I’m sorry for the repetitive meals. They are quick and easy and something all three of us will usually eat without a problem.

I’m sorry that I have to say ‘no’ to plans out more often than I can say ‘yes’. It’s not that I don’t want to go or do things with you. I really, really do.

I’m sorry for the times that I say to my daughter, “Get off me!” because I’m so inundated with the little personal space invader that my skin is starting to crawl.

I’m sorry for feeling like I should feel sorry. I’m sorry for not being the confident “I can do anything” woman that society (or at least part of it) wishes for all mothers to be. I’m sorry I’m not a Pinteresty SAHM with all kinds of crafts and cleaning hacks and design tips.

I am just a mother with a small house that never seems entirely clean, a rambunctious toddler that can turn on the sun with her smile, and a hard-working husband (teacher and pastor) whom I will never be able to thank enough for all he does.

A friend of mine shared this article this morning, I am entirely thankful for its honesty and truth. I agree with it wholeheartedly, though I am definitely one of those mothers that often feels guilty for wanting time to myself. But I’m working on it.

NaBloPoMo 2014 Day 25: Encapsulated Mind and Soul

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I have had the same Bible for at least the past twelve years and I am loath to be rid of it. Not because it is the most comprehensive or best reviewed translation. No. I will keep this Bible until it falls apart and maybe even then because it is full of memories and reminders for my heart.

For instance, Proverbs of my favorite book of the Bible. My high school teacher would go through it chapter by chapter, day by day, a few months a year, and I was always amazed and blessed by how she could pull meaningful and relevant interpretations from a centuries-old text. So I still continue the practice today in my personal devotion and prayer time. If a particular verse strikes me, I usually mark it with that day’s date and it’s rather amazing to go back and see how often verses come back into my life with a new relevance, a new poignancy. Sometimes I can match verses and dates with entries in my journals and it’s always eye-opening to review just what was going on in my life at that time and how those verses were relevant to my process and growth.

This Bible is full of note cards with specific prayer requests from college Bible study groups. A thin purple ribbon that a best friend once tied around my finger marks the beginning of the book of Philippians, right next to Paul’s joyous prayer for his friends, what I have now come to call my “Ribbon Prayer”. There is a sticker/picture of the Russian pastor and his family with whom I and three other young women worked ten summers ago. I remember that family and their enthusiastic smiles and kindness and exultation in life and in us. There are notes that I have written in any spare white space I can find in this Bible’s pages, thoughts on my life and on these words of God and their impact, as well as prayers, interpretations, and reminders.

Yes, I think I will hold on to this Bible for as long as I am able, if for no other reason than to be able to pass it on my daughter with my journals, so that may be able to see a glimpse into the process and growth of her mother’s life and faith.