Poetry Sunday

Reflection
***
I rest upon a sunset dream
aglow in wondrous light.
I sat upon a misty stream
alone in somber night.

I sang a song and it did seem
a melody of flight.
I sat by sand and saw a gleam;
a rhapsody of sight.

I basked amidst a brazen beam;
a fountainful of fight.
As to arouse my sunset dream.
To mornings marvel of white.

***
*** Lead me, stairway ***
***
MY heart aches; severed it breaks
I am torn from limb to limb.
Branch by branch my life is quaking
as a storm in the sand; whisking the dust to heights
away from my eyes or into them
for my sight seems hindered.
I squint to see through darkened clouds
billowing like the tidal waves across the sand.
Bustling around my head as if to keep me in a
silent reverie.
I let out a harrowing scream for to let,
just one person know I am amid this raging storm
And I need assistance in clarification
of the icicled granules
that pierce my skin.

Reach out for me like rays from the gleaming orb that
drapes the sky in crimson glory.
Draw me from this cavernous abode;
out of this blackened pit;
spew me forth into the great flaming meadows
of intricate bellowing blossoms.
Hold me in everlasting beauty and guide me
to the stairway
that leads me to the peace that will blanket my soul
and comfort me in harmonious bliss!!!

Writing is only boring to the people who are boring themselves.
Anonymous

May I never grow to old to treasure 'once upon a time'.
Anonymous

IMAGINATION

"I shut my eyes in order to see." -- Paul Gauquin

"There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination." -- Edmund Burke

"Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier." -- Charles F. Kettering

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." -- --Albert Einstein

Many of us are afraid to follow our passions, to pursue what we want most because it means taking risks and even facing failure. But to pursue your passion with all your heart and soul is success in itself. The greatest failure is to have never really tried.
--Robyn Allan

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
--Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

It is a lesson which all history teaches the wise, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances" -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.” -- Ken Hakuta

"Take all the training you can get; one good idea is all you need to save yourself years of hard work." -- Brian Tracy

"The Bible says, ‘If you wish to find, you must search.’ I believe that is true, rarely does a good idea interrupt you." -- Jim Rohn

I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.
Guillaume Apollinaire

When you meet a man, you judge him by his clothes; when you leave, you judge him by his heart.
Russian proverb

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.” -- Steve Jobs

“Only through focus can you do world-class things, no matter how capable you are."
-- Bill Gates

"Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential." -- Barack Obama

"Above all be of single aim; have a legitimate and useful purpose, and devote yourself unreservedly to it." -- James Allen

Poetry Sunday

Gone Away… from Home

The angel swept across the miles,
a duty on her shoulder.
A quest she didn't understand.
Knowing God would hold her.

Leaving behind all she stored;
every material treasure.
To walk the road the Lord had set,
one without true measure.

Her family mourned for she was gone;
no longer by their side.
Her work for them was now complete;
Faith her only guide.

Firmly implanted, she walks alone,
a shield of grace adorned.
Everyone needs to let her grow,
Through the woman about to form.

Quotation Saturday

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe.
~Marcel Proust

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.
~Samuel Johnson

The best style is the style you don't notice.
~Somerset Maugham

There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes.
~William Makepeace Thackeray


No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.
~Van Wyck Brooks

He that uses many words for the explaining any subject doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.
~John Ray

I do not like to write - I like to have written.
~Gloria Steinem

A notepad by the bedside accounts for half the earnings of my livelihood. If it weren't for bedtime, half my novels would still be stuck at dock.
~Ever Garrison

I keep little notepads all over the place to write down ideas as soon as they strike, but the ones that fill up the quickest are always the ones at my nightstand.
~Emily Logan Decens

I even shower with my pen, in case any ideas drip out of the waterhead.
~Graycie Harmon

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.
~Lord Byron

HOPE (quotes)

HOPE


"Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them." ~ William James

“Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.” ~ Samuel Smiles

"Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.” ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

"Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent." ~ Mignon McLaughlin

He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool. ~Albert Camus (1913 - 1960), The Rebel (1951)

Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--'Wait and hope'. ~~Alexandre Dumas (1802 - 1870), The Count of Monte Cristo

While there's life, there's hope. ~Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Ad Atticum

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul.
And sings the tune
Without the words,
and never stops at all.
~EmilyDickinson (1830 - 1886)


Remember, no matter how hard the times are that you are going through,
no matter how low you fall...
there is always hope!
~joni~

Put off until tomorrow...

...what you should be doing today.


The real quote is “Why put off until tomorrow, what you can do today.” ‘Why’ being the operative word here, but lately I’ve missed the boat and have been putting off until tomorrow the things I should be doing today.

Like my writing. Some would call it procrastinating, but I am in a serious deficit of putting things off until tomorrow. Like this post, it entered my mind last week, bubbled there a bit, and I thought, I’ll wait until tomorrow. It is a week later and I’m just getting to this post, and believe me, I have tons going on in my head that make me want to stop writing and put it off again until...tomorrow? Next week perhaps?

My dilemma? Well most of you know that I’ve moved recently and almost all of you (who follow religiously) are aware of my situation. Recap: Fiancé going blind, no medical help, being forced to move to another state in hopes of getting help, then...the farm. A city girl born and raised, who yearned for the country life, and now, it seems my life is all that I’ve dreamed of.

I’m on a farm, I have a garden and I have well over 3 acres of land to mow and tend. We’re renting, but it still is an awe inspiring emotional time for me. So where does that leave my writing? It is in my heart, always, that’s where! Don’t worry, I may get behind in my blog, I may forget to help you all in your writing journey, but please know, the only things that I put off until tomorrow, are the very things that I HAVE to put off for the moment.

I’ve mentored this F2K session and I wasn’t even there in my heart. I have two rooms that I facilitate at WVU and luckily it is a slow time in the U or they would be having my head and taking over my rooms. Everyone understands what is happening in my life so they understand what things are more important to me at this time. If I worry about everyone else, who is going to worry about me and my family?

I have a strong faith that carries me through every single day, and when He says, “Joni, get back to your writing this instant!” I will surely adhere to His voice and come back here full steam ahead. I think in the Fall I’ll have tons to write about and maybe my mind will have absorbed all that is going on here and maybe, just maybe, I’ll write about it and tell you all how it plays into my writing life.

For you, the new writer, I’m not putting you off, I’m not putting off my writing or my blog, I’m just inhaling the glorious beauty that the Lord has surrounded me with. Whatever you do, “Don’t put off until tomorrow, what YOU can do TODAY!”


"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.Dream. Discover!"
-- MARK TWAIN

Poetry Sunday

Life’s Chained Prison

Am I alone in this chained prison,
all by my own fruition?
Do I idly cower in fear,
it's never clear;
problems have nearly risen.

To heights unforeseen, I am alone;
on a quest not yet shown.
Do I scamper all about,
I try to shout.....
but silent is my tone.

Confusion has impeded my sight.
I often buckle; no strength to fight.
Will anyone hear my cries,
unveiled lies,
The blind now see the light.

Free me from these sheltered walls,
I hear the sacred angels calls.
Not alone I am defeating,
now completing;
HIS arms will catch my falls!!!!

Quotation Saturday

Proust speaks of "an illusory magical power in literature".

It is not possible that a piece of sculpture, a piece of music which gives us an emotion which we feel to be more exalted, more pure, more true, does not correspond to some definite spiritual reality. It is surely symbolical of one, since it gives that impression of profundity and truth. Thus nothing resembled more closely than some such phrase of Vinteuil the peculiar pleasure which I had felt at certain moments in my life, when gazing, for instance, at the steeples of Martinville, or at certain trees along a road near Balbec, or, more simply, in the first part of this book, when I tasted a certain cup of tea."

This passage links together two of Proust's main ideas: the idea that art reveals deep truths, truths that daily life doesn't reveal, and the idea that unconscious memory, the memory of a sight, a smell or a taste, can also reveal deep truths.

Like most outstanding writers, Proust had a low opinion of literary critics. Proust said that critics always overrate certain authors and underrate others: "This constant aberration of the critics is such that a writer should almost prefer to be judged by the public at large....For the talent of a great writer--which, after all, is merely an instinct religiously hearkened to (while silence is imposed on everything else) perfected and understood--has more in common with the instinctive life of the people than with the superficial verbiage and fluctuating standards of the conventionally recognised judges."

Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
~~Neil Gaiman

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.
~~Neil Gaiman

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
~~Edgar Allan Poe

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? ~~ George Orwell

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist. ~~ Isaac Asimov

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

America's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness, is our belief in second chances, our belief that we can always start over, that things can be made better.
~~Anthony Walton

Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
~~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet," Essays, Second Series, 1844

When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
~~Adlai Stevenson

Have a SAFE and GLORIOUS Fourth of July in the Land of the FREE