Memorial

Often spoken words lose meaning
Repetition, redundancy, familiarity
Turns the phrase
Into empty sentiment.

What shall we call these things
Courage, commitment, duty, belief
Pallor of soul
To sigh and ache?

Can we even speak of heroes anymore?

Give Yourself 3 Minutes - NOW!

Repost - Sacred Moment

I saw the face of God the other day. 

I was in a stranger’s home, where my new work often takes me, and was taken by an unframed painting hanging in the foyer. After dealing with several matters of business, I could not help but ask.

Me: I hate to pry, but who did that painting?

Proud Mother: My daughter. 

Me: It is lovely, very moving, actually.

Proud Mother: That one over there was the first painting she ever did. (She pointed toward the dining room)

I am a father. I have seen the ‘firsts’ of a lot of things. My daughter is a good artist, and her first attempts look just like that: efforts that show promise, but lack the presence of an educated and trained talent. This painting showed nothing, and I mean nothing, of being a first, except the first masterpiece. I then heard how this young artist had never as much as drawn a stick figure (beyond childhood), nor shown any interest in art until her senior year in high school. Her family had moved her to North Carolina from New York the summer before her senior year and she reacted as one might expect. To make matters worse, not only had she been ‘forced’ to leave her friends and classmates, because of the North Carolina educational requirements, she had to take two art classes, one a junior class and the other a sophomore introductory art class. After a brief introduction to the use of canvas and paint, she had responded to her first assignment with a painting, a painting that now held me captive. Her muse had been a photo taken of her cradling her cat. She had decided to paint the self portrait and replace the cat with an infant child.

I wish you could see the work as it is now permanently burned upon the canvas of my mind. I wish I could post a photo of it for you to see. I wish that my ability to write could come even within a universe of describing what I saw hanging on the wall in that home. I wish you could feel the chills running up your skin as I did. I wish that every human could see the wonder and awe of the creative moment that she managed to capture. It is pure beauty. I long to describe what I saw, but alas I cannot. I will simply honor the wonder and miracle of that moment when the efforts of a young woman captured for me and gifted me in that moment of time with a glimpse of the Divine.

I saw the face of God the other day.

A Writer’s Block of Stone, Public Journey #001

I attended a writer’s class recently for five weeks. Christopher Laney (writer, pilot and all around amazing human being) lead the group. I have struggled with writing. It isn't the need for stories to tell or a lack of love for words that holds me back, but one of my blocks is that I sit down to write and what comes out, for all of it’s potential, isn't that good. It has ‘good’ in it, but it just isn't the ‘perfect’ piece I would like to write – so, I write only rarely – when the inspiration bludgeons me to action.

Christopher shared an analogy with us. In the same way a sculptor must begin with a block of stone in order to carve a work of art, the writer must begin with a mass of words and begin the process of carving piece from them. I have been experimenting with this approach by writing free-form for 30-40 minutes and then slowly sculpting something from the mass of ideas and words generated in the free-form time.  I thought it might be fun to share one of these sculpting projects with you, so I have posted below the mass of words from which I will be seeking to carve something akin to an essay. I plan to post another phase of this next weekend, and I invite you to return and see what has been released from this writer’s block of word stone…

Rivers, oceans and streams collect things – rain, mud, branches, sand, and the dead. Dead birds, fish, people. He went to sleep with the fishes.

Time heals all wounds, well time allows for adequate decay, anyway. It softens, swells, expands until it pops- melts looses from its form (lets loose itself?) and changes into the collective. In water we are all borg – resistance is futile – really it isn't present at all.

Finally it becomes homogeneous – a mixture of all things , formless, laps with all tides and waves, a rocky cradle of the world’s mush – oatmeal of everything.

Some would say we came from the sea, an evolution of undaunted genetics that have to, must evolve – gather its one self and form to conform to demands of our own becoming. So with the waxing and waning, the tugging of the moon’s tidings upon us – a planetary massaging of our little planet – we have become this formed p[lace and these formed creatures, plants, people and things.

Some speak if coming from and returning to our creator, and if such is true then we are created by the hands of the sea. See then the sea in all of us? See all of us in the sea?

We do return to the sea – the splashing of childish play and delight (I witnessed many occasions of children and adults witnessing the sea for the first time – they have been in-landers all of their life and never seen the sea. That seems strange to me – what a change of perspective that must be – to see the sea, to see and feel for the first time the sea from which we are created?), the percussion of a dead body dropped form the pier, the trickle of mucus-like decay through soil, water tables and into the streams that feed the sea – we all return. We return and melt and blend in to the great sea – dissolved and transported.

Then some poor fool turns on a tap and drinks us.

Spainsh Moss

Clinging to branches among the oaks

Timeless observer of time’s passing

You sway through breezes and revolutions

Directing humanity’s passage

As if orchestrating a divine symphony

With nothing but a wisp connecting you

To the lofty vantage from which you observe

Coy and unaffected

Your slight presence fans our dreams

As a winter wind stirs the smoldering fire

Little more than air feeds you

A hint of sea salt to spice your tasting

Of our adventures and chaos

You remain, lingering luscious

As the memory of a lover’s sigh

Eternally upon us

A Cup of Character

Below are some excerpts from an essay I'm developing.

The coffee here is horrid. I forget this little fact between visits. It is weak in flavor and appearance. As I settle into my place among the identical sets of heavily varnished oak furniture, I notice this restaurant offers a similar transparency. Country curtains on every window and systematically placed cut-glass salt and pepper shakers proclaim homey character. Maps printed on faux aged parchment and brochures labeled by decade tell us this place is rooted in our own ancestry. Here our personal memories have been catalogued for us, our own character defined.

The character they would have us find here is one of home as if presented in the tidiness of a Norman Rockwell painting. Yes, this place has character written all over the walls, menus, nick-knacks, and the wardrobes of the waitresses. It is a script carefully written by some deliberate designer and published by a majority vote in a boardroom. Yet, if it reads character it reads too loudly…

… This place fails. It isn’t the character that fails. This restaurant doesn’t lack for location, or presentation. What is missing here is something less easily conjured up on design tables or decided upon in board rooms.

The ‘Stinky Cat Coffee Shop’ wasn’t pre-planned. It just happened. Over time, it grew. In its own lore the place was a house, a home. People lived here. They dreamed away nights, ate breakfast together, thought of and planned for days at work and activities at school. They went about practical tasks and created meaningful moments. There are records of this planning and living preserved here. Faint lines on the back of doors catalog the slow ascent of children. Scars on the cabinet doors mark the memory of child safety latches. Claw marks on a door frame are deep assurance that a cat was part of the family.

Time passed and the family left. The house passed from family to tenant to vacancy with each chapter adding its own story to the place. For a while the building sat empty, housing only the occasional vagrant that slipped in to sleep or drink himself into unconsciousness. One sometimes stood in the corner and peed himself when he could do no better. Those stains don’t really come out, no matter how many times you clean and polish. The stains fade and become part of the character of the wood, but they do not disappear.

People disappeared and smaller occupants arrived. Squirrels hoarded acorns, rats nested, insects bored into the wood and things too small and transient to leave much of a legacy for us to see all made their contributions. In the scratches on the doors, the discolorations of the wood, the layers of paint, partially missing wallpaper and yellowed tile they all left their marks. People, insects and rodents alike have all left something of themselves…

…This place speaks its story softly but intently brushing against every occupant, purring an old and worthy message…

Writing Class

I'm taking a writing class for the next five weeks and since one of our suggestions is to forgo wqriting on the keyboard in favor of paper and pen - I'll be more absent than usual from my blog.

I'm excited. 

In the mean time visit The Sanctuary and Christopher.

When Words Have Meaning

Words are abundant and free flowing, tokens tossed into our lives, plentiful, over available loud and empty cases more often than not. We throw them around like a used tea bag or an under valued cap that we flipped onto the floor only later to be kicked under the bed thoughtlessly when walking past, devoted to more important things, left there to settle into uselessness with the dust mites and pet dander.

Hello, how are you?

Good, you?

What are you doing?

I know that, but…

New and improved

Do you have a minute?

Whatever you want to do

It isn’t about the money

I love you

Yet, when the words are spoken at the right time, a time book ended between mutual struggles, and collective losses gathered along the common road of years battling commonality and mediocrity and when those words are spoken between you and that now dear and dying friend or quoted to you by someone who heard them spoken of you by that same collaborator of greatness – then those words mean more than the very life into which they are spoken.

Such was my day, today.

ForestFear

Remember when

We found the forest

Together

Intense, alluring and terrible

We cowered in fear

Shadows danced

Masked marauders set on our capture

Thorns, impenetrable barriers

Pole arms of razor steel

To strip flesh and life from bone

Time

We eventually found our way

Safely among these harrowing acquaintances

Shadows became nuances of light

Painting images of complex contrast upon

Canvases of hope

Spears’ edges, properly marked and navigated

Became safe havens

Briar patches of protection

Time

Now, you and I

Are bored and dumb

Silently wishing for

Another forest to conquer

Walking Free

perspiration trails down jaw lines
the journey of necessity

vigilance
arms stretch outward

balancing
delicate steps along the precipice of doubt
pained


muscles constrict and release in rhythm
a waltz that dances ever

forward
withered cravings scream
threats

rebellion and unwillingness
fear 


wisps of liberated mist rise
once bound to soil and stone now free

rising
supportive hands appear
lifting

forever a small piece of weighty matter
relief