Poetry Sunday ~ Silence Whispers ~

Fire in the heart sends smoke into the head. ~Proverb
***
Silence Whispers
***
The crackle of embers
burning desire
embedded in the
human fire.

The light emits
a softened glow
each pirouette
a stately show.

Shadows dance
across the room
with each step
escapes the gloom.

Silence whispers
a single flame
the Light, the glory
without a name.

Hear the call
behold the sound
become one with
all you’ve found.

Melody holds
the infamous key
the Light, the love,
you gave to me!

Quotation Saturday

The three ‘I’s and a spare...

IMAGINATION

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. 

~Michelangelo

The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination.
~Emily Dickinson

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. 

~Mark Twain

Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. 

~Norman Podhoretz


INTEGRITY
 

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day. 

~Abraham Lincoln

Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness. 

~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught. 

~J.C. Watts

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. ~Buddha

INTUITION
Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out. ~Michael Burke

Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness. 

~John Sterling
 

Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way. 

~Florence Scovel Shinn

I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason. 

~Stanley Baldwin

 

The INTERNET...
 

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life. 

~Andrew Brown

A Story is Born...

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! 

~Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!
***

Did you ever wonder how a story is born? The foreplay, the inception, the follow through, and then the BIRTH of a short story or novel, or maybe even an article?

A lot of times it is through idle gossip or a man walking with flowers and as your mind wonders where he is going, who the flowers are for; you are now having the foreplay of a story being born.

I remember when I first began this journey of writing, one of the things I learned or was taught about how to find a story idea, I was told to stop/look/ and listen. Stop to take in my surroundings, observe the people, this is where our characters are being formed. The man in a suit on a 100 degree day, with a mutton chop mustache, and a cane by his side. That stands out in a observant day, and you now have a character to build a story with.

Listen: You’re in a cafe, minding your own business when you over hear two elegant older women talking. You take a quick glance and you automatically get the feeling that you are going to pair one of them with old mutton chops. Your mind is reeling now. They start talking about Barb, the hair dresser having an affair! Oh my, you are now in on the good stuff.

Well Barb is having an affair with this dashing fellow, (who sounds an awful lot like old mutton chops.) You begin to take notes on a napkin because this story starter is just too good to pass up!

As commotion begins in another booth with a bunch of teenagers. You over hear the one declaring, “She was my girlfriend first!” Then the a gun is pulled out and the teen tells the other to leave. The two ladies behind you gasp so loud, you record on the napkin OMG!
An officer who happens to be seated at the counter, out of uniform, stands, pulls out his pistol...

Do you see how one thing leads to another in the making of a story? This is how simple it is for us writers. Not all of us mind you have this innate ability to make point A meet point B! Some of us get stuck in the dungeon with writers block and we can’t see old Harry mutton chops with Esmeralda the town snot. But it’s there! A story is waiting to be born!

In the corners of your imagination; in the stench of the dank and dark dungeon, awaits a story, just wanting to be unraveled. And you, the writer, are going to be the one to unravel it, thread by thread, until you blanket the reader with...satisfaction!

Now get writing and remember, there is a story in each and every one of you just waiting to be told!

***

The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person. 

~Frank Barron, Think, November-December 1962

12 Steps to Cure Writing Addiction

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways. ~Buddha

***

There are a lot of addictions out there in this world and writing is one of them. Tapping on the keys minute after minute, waking people in the early sunrise of the morning with all the flutter, what an annoying sound, eh? Tap Tap Tap!!!

So how can you stop this addiction? How can you cure yourself of such addiction, if at all possible? Follow these twelve steps and you for sure, will never want to write again. Go ahead, I dare ya!

1) Visit facebook once a day, early morning and visit say, 25-50 of your friends. Say good morning, wait for a response, wheee and woohoo a little or maybe a lot. A really cool distraction from writing!

2) Visit your writing class, you know, that’s the place that holds your addiction of writing too, but instead, read the posts and comment your heart out and LOOK like your a writer just by being there. Again, do some WHEE-ing and WOOHOO-ing so you don’t look like a serious writer.

3) Wander aimlessly at space dot com. I can get lost in that place for a day even a couple days and forget that I’m a writer in an astral second!

4) Go play in the garden. This is a sure fire way to get distracted from writing. The soil between your fingers, the blooms that need trimming, the sun pounding on your back. Just get lost in the pleasantry of it all.

5) Go for a ride down a country road. This is another good distraction. You get lost in the beauty of the landscapes and fragrances, so no need to worry about writing out there.
And don’t you dare take a pen and notebook, sit under the shade of a tree while a river is flowing right past you.

6)  Who am I kidding? You actually made it to number six, thinking there is a possible cure for a writing addiction? There is no cure! There are many distractions that will keep you from writing, and all of the above 1-5 are there just eking you into submission, so you DON’T write!

Try this, so you don’t become distracted. Use facebook to actually say good morning, then LEAVE (or delete the account completely.) Go to your writing site and actually use it to LEARN something! Not to PLAY! The writing life is not all about WOOHOO-ing and if I see one more WOOHOO grace my screen, I think I’ll just end it all. It is utterly unprofessional, and distracting and if it continues, I’m going to enjoy what my Sunday surprise brought me, NO INTERNET!!!

Yup that’s it folks, the trick to actually getting writing done is to write and not look at the internet until you’re done for the day!

Happy Blazing Trails into the WRITING world!!! Now Write!

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins. ~Bob Moawad

Woeful Wednesday?

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. ~Eric Fromm
***

Seems like I have a lot of those days lately doesn’t it? It’s okay when it is only one day out of the week or perhaps a day out of the month. As long as I keep the Lord and my relationship with Him in perspective, life will work out just fine for me.

We haven’t gotten any calls from Omaha to say, “Come on down! You’re the next in line for The Cornea Transplant!” Of course I don’t think they’ll be as enthusiastic about it as the Price is Right guy, but that is what it will sound like to us, who are here waiting for that call. I’m sure people on the outside are wondering, “Did they get the call yet?” and we here on the inside have to go through each day, wondering if the next time the phone rings it is going to be ‘the call’.

I’ve been keeping myself busy, cleaning like a mad woman, since I missed two weeks of work due to my twisted blue smurf foot! And thanks for all of your concern, my internet friends. My foot is healing, I can walk around on it, but please don't ask me to put a sneaker on, it just might hinder all the progress that the foot has gone through the past two weeks.

I did something that I rarely do, and that was REST! I kept my swelled and blue foot up for almost two weeks, only walking on it to maybe wash a load of clothes, or fix dinner, then it was back to the sofa to rest! Me! For those of you who know me, and know me well, Joni does not rest, even if she has impending pneumonia!

Now my grass outside has grown to impossible heights. I like to keep up on it, and yes I have a son who has been mowing, but I’ll have you know, my mower does not like wet grass and it conks out about every minute of mow, so that then the thing is so worn out from inhaling all the wet grass, it won’t restart again!

Woe, Woe, Woe is me! Not! Today is beaus and mine’s ninth year together. In all its color and craziness, highs and lows, ups and downs, to see and not to see, we’re still together. So while I have a lot of woeful sighs, bad days, lowest of lows, I have high highs too! AMEN!!!

Even after the barn caught fire the other day. The owner and his workers were well on their way to reopening this Turkey Ranch I live on. They had the barn all cleaned out and the wood chips were delivered and while spreading them on the floor for the soon to be arriving turkeys, the place caught fire and by the time the fire department arrived, the roof of the place had collapsed and not one wood-chip left over.

The only affect it had on me was the sadness to the workers who were excited to see, after two years of being closed and job losses, the Turkey Ranch was re-opening and giving hope to possibly new workers! We go on! It is what we do!

I’ll continue to rise at the crack of dawn to write and have a great and glorious day today and always. Now I expect you to do the same! :) Godspeed!

Poetry Sunday ~ Abysmal Plight

All it takes is one bloom of hope to make a spiritual garden. ~Terri Guillemets
***
Abysmal Plight
***
Sweltering heat timely delay
no one has cared for me today.
Drowning in the leaves of the season,
festering boils all for a reason.

Peel my skin; scale back pain
leave me standing alone in the rain.
Pretend that you love me say you care
Your thoughts and presence are never there.

Once bitten twice shy
leave my soul to wither and die.
As I climb this mountain alone
No one to call me or ask me home.

Far away beyond your reach,
I scan the shores of eternity’s beach.
I am but a grain in the vast summer swell
I burn and churn in this created hell.

Can I be saved from this hungry disease
that torments and twists me to my knees.
The Light of the Lord can carry me far,
away from all things as worldly you are.

I can not partake I will not succumb
to this earthly crust that all have become.
I soar in the realm of spiritual bliss...
arms wide open the cosmos I kiss!

All rights reserved: copyright © Joni Zipp

Quotation Saturday

JEALOUS

The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves. 

~William Penn
 

Jealousy is simply and clearly the fear that you do not have value. Jealousy scans for evidence to prove the point - that others will be preferred and rewarded more than you. There is only one alternative - self-value. If you cannot love yourself, you will not believe that you are loved. You will always think it's a mistake or luck. Take your eyes off others and turn the scanner within. Find the seeds of your jealousy, clear the old voices and experiences. Put all the energy into building your personal and emotional security. Then you will be the one others envy, and you can remember the pain and reach out to them. ~Jennifer James

As iron is eaten by rust, so are the envious consumed by envy. 

~Antisthenes

Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it. ~Honore de Balzac

 

PERSPECTIVE
 

I am chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of my eyes. ~Antonio Porchia
 

I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years'. 

~Henry Moore

Someone said, "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know. 

~T.S. Eliot

If you're being run out of town, get in front of the crowd and make it look like a parade. 

~Author Unknown

 

CHANGE
 

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. 

~Harold Wilson

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. 

~Anatole France

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. 

~Victor Frankl

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer. 

~Shunryu Suzuki

HUMOR
 

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs. 

~Christopher Morley

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. 

~Francis Bacon

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. 

~Mark Twain
 

I pity the person who lacks a sense of humor. Their life is boring, misguided and they sit on a judgment seat where they have no right sitting, atop a whoopie cushion. 

~Joni Zipp
 

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. 

~William James

Moralistic Matters

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ~Edgar Allan Poe
***

I’m curious, how many writers write with morals in mind? I’m a King fan and often some of the things he writes, I have to just hang my jaw and let flies creep in as he seems to be writing from an immoral frame of mind.

When writers write do they fly outside the box and curse like a sailor, (I’ve never heard a sailor curse, so they may get a bum wrap.) Seriously, if you are a moral person, or like to think yourself one, and you’re a writer, or are at least trying to be one, do you have the right to write things that you would never in a million years write?

It’s like eroticism. I came across an eroticism writer on facebook and was appalled by what she publicly was displaying for all the world to see. Not only did her book house a naked woman on it with a mans hands in... places I won’t go there, but the whole incident made me think of what kind of woman this writer was. Was she lonely, desperate for love, needy, what? What causes someone to turn to basically pornography as a means of a living?

Isn’t that selling your soul? Selling your self worth. Just as the men or women who read and gawk at that stuff, to me they are all on the desperate train for some form of affection and needs their desires met, through words, images, whatever, to get their juices flowing. (NO PUN INTENDED HERE!!)

The woman has a facebook wall, and her posts were as sordid as her cover of the book. Her banner was sleazy, her daily posts were sleazy and it took everything in me to keep from actually vomiting! Needless to say, I didn’t want to be friends any more with the person who had accepted her as a friend.

I know there are romance writers out there and they give the women what they need. A titillating tale, that gives them just enough imagery to go off into the fantasy world with say, Fabio? I’m wondering if we’re such a deprived society. Deprived of love, if we need to sink our teeth into anything and everything that takes us on the broom ride of the fantasy world so we don’t have to face reality.

Westerns, sci-fi, and spooky horror tales are one thing, but is there an invisible line placed on the snow-blank paper, that will keep YOU, the writer, away from tapping into the desperation that your heart and soul is calling for?

I will admit, I’ve never read a romance, don’t ‘get into’ the fantasy of Harry Potter or any witches and werewolves tales, and thus, I will never write a lurid romance, or a tale of witchery, because I have morals that I abide by, and won’t cross them for some fantasy, or for the almighty dollar that everyone seems to cling to.

I am me, and there is no other!

***

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet. ~Joseph Joubert

Wicked Wednesday

Isa. 14: 12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
***

Well I’m finding it’s a writers dream out there. There’s a market that is surging with promise and hope. I call it the Wicked Market. The market is in for witches, thanks to Harry Potter, and vampires and werewolves thanks to Twilight. A market that has taken over the world and brought out the dark evil force that lies deep within everyone’s psyche.

Well I’ve had a run in with this ‘dark force’ but most would just call it a stroke of bad luck, bad timing, whatever they want to call it. Me, I call it a dark force. It has blossomed with the advent of the tales. And as some might say, “Oh they’re just fictional stories”, “They’re not real!” Some might even believe that in their minds.

I wonder if the Wiccan religion is finding a surge in residency? I wonder if Harry Potter has made that religion a laughing stock or enabled them to remain in control of their growth and squelch those ‘non-believers’ who feel their religion is just  fiction or un-real!

I come from a world where my God created heaven and hell. And as many people would like to think that when He created hell, He left it in a silent slumber until the return of heaven on earth? Isn't that just silly?

Many books have been written on the matter, many have slapped my Jesus in the face boldly, thank you Dan Brown. And many writers have made a mockery of the very evil that keeps us being a hateful, ignorant, and selfish society. We relish our own vanity and there is no room for God or the impending doom that He will wreak on us. But then again does man care? Of course not.

Many a t.v. shows have beautified the darkness, blew it up to cosmetic proportions, and have left some of us Christians wondering just how quickly He will return to wipe all the smirks off of their faces.

I remember as a kid watching Bewitched and it fascinated me so much that *I* wanted to be a witch. I went to the library and read all about REAL witchery and come to find out, the witches that CHARMED the pants off of people, are witches! The Witches of Eastwick, are witches! The phoniness, or fictionalizing, comes in when they get cosmetically enhanced men and women to bring the story all the falsity that it needs, but in the end, there are men and women who actually fell for the deviants work and succumbed.

Just so you know, where there is DARK there is Light. There is no in between. Sure the Bible was written thousands of years ago, but God has not and will not change the demands, covenants, LAWS that He made on us humans! He is the same as he was in the beginning, now and ever shall be, world without end, amen, AMEN!

Job 18:5 Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine.

Poetry Corner ~ Dreamland ~

Psalm 136:9 The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.

***
Dreamland 

***
In the land where I choose to sleep
come to me and there we’ll meet.
Reach your hand out to mine
I’ll grab hold together we’ll climb

The mountainous terrain,
the windswept hills.
capture a moment of
dreamtime thrills.

Aloft we’ll fly through the stars
capture time knowing no scars.
We’ll hold the place; keep the time
dance in rhythm swing in rhyme.

We’ll waltz in the fields
with flowers in bloom
we’ll blow a wish
as the stars make room.

Trails of light kiss every step
softly we sway with sprightly pep.
The cord has bound into a knot
a moment’s peace we’ve not forgot.

Join me on this astral plane,
where you and I share one vein.
We’ll go on in wondrous bliss
remembering not the starlight kiss.

***

O:) for you O:)

Quotation Saturday

FRIENDSHIP ~

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. 
~Albert Schweitzer

A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad. ~Arnold H. Glasgow
 
If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. ~Edgar Watson Howe

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. 
~Plutarch

PHILOSOPHY ~
 
When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics. ~Voltaire

My definition [of a philosopher] is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down. ~Louisa May Alcott
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. 
~Ambrose Bierce, Epigrams

Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to our selves. That we have first raised a dust, and then complain, we cannot see. 
~George Berkeley

DREAMS ~
 
Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare. 
~H.F. Hedge
 
Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you. 
~Marsha Norman

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake. 
~Rene Descartes
 
Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison. 
~Henri Amiel

BOOKS ~
 
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead, - from human souls whom we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of miles away; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. 
~Charles Kingsley

Let your bookcases and your shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. 
~Judah Ibn Tibbon

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. 
~Francis Bacon

Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world. 
~Walter Pater

LOVE ~
 
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. 
~Mother Teresa

There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved. It is God's finger on man's shoulder. 
~Charles Morgan

Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. 
~Kahlil Gibran

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Dramatizing Events

Psalms 30:3 O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.
***

The life of a writer is always full of drama. While other people have days where things go wrong, we writers have days of drama and we just have to spill the words onto the page to let everyone else in on our drama through what else, dramatizing.

Saturday started off like any other Saturday, except here in Nebraska it was unusually hot. ‘Another lazy hazy crazy day of Summer’ I thought. And so it began. I sat at the computer to write. I like writing my poems on Saturday to get them ready for Poetry Sunday, and maybe even pop out a post for Monday too. But that wasn’t going to happen on this day.

Adam decided he was going to mow the long grass! It’s long because every time we try to mow, the wet grass clogs up the blade and the poor mower poops out at mid shave! As was the way it went Saturday, except it started smoking. Trails of smoke lifted in the air, lingering for what seemed forever, but finally it stopped and so did Adam. “Call it a day.” I said. Oh he was more than happy to. ;)

I came in the house and tried sitting here to write, AGAIN. Beau decided to take ALL the books off the bookshelf; dust it, pull it out, and vacuum behind it. Good idea right? Wrong!!! The book shelf sits behind me at a towering 6 foot. It holds a whole lot of books! All the books on the floor, the shelf moved out, vacuuming begins. Watching as beau vacuumed, (he don’t like help, remember, he is blind yet independent!) I hear a HIGH pitch from the vacuum, recognizable as being something stuck, and sure enough, a piece of wood was stuck, shattering the belt and letting off a foul odor only to be inhaled at a community dump.

*SNAP* went his watch band. His brand new talking watch (the other ones battery died and was impossible to replace) So a new one arrived last week and *SNAP*, the band broke. “Well this day is a bust!” I said. “Let’s just call it a day.” It was about 3:30 by that time and nothing had gone right, I got no writing done, no mowing again, but the shelf was clean and shiny!

So we decided to find a new pin for the watch band, take the staple gun back to the basement and make something good come of this day. We go down the steps, beau in front, me in the back and *SNAP* My ankle snapped, I went down the last two steps hard and a scream came from me that went all the way to the heavens I’m sure.  I thought it was Fourth of July all over again, because I saw fireworks going off in my head as I sat there in pain! Tears flowed like a streaming river and had it not been for beaus strength in getting me up the steps, I’d still be lying there in pain.

Instant black and blue. Blood seeping from the scratched skin. I was on the sofa and did not move except to get to the bathroom. I had a golf club for a cane, and two guys waiting on me hand and foot. Oh the luxury of it all.

Sunday was spent with an ice pack, and another long sofa visit. I could put more weight on my foot, but then it took on the look of a Hobbits foot with no hair! Big, puffy and colorful as a storm cloud. Speaking of which, Sunday evening brought in a storm that left limbs strewn all over the place. One large one is impeding my walk down the back steps, narrowly missing the roof, for which it surely would have done roof damage!

The weekend is finally over, and I’m sitting here dramatizing the events. We’re all okay, and that is all that matters. You hear it all the time when people realize that life is really all that matters. My Hobbit foot is mending, the watch band is fixed, and I have hope that the vacuum and mower will be fine also. I just keep remembering...they are just material objects! We’re ALIVE! *Big Happy Face*

Longer than a 500 word post, but it was well worth it! Thanks for reading!

Poetry Sunday ~ When Darkness Calls

 When Darkness Calls

***

I crawled onto the naked floor

Wet from tears I cried before.

Clawing clenching my nails they bled

For want of need for to be fed.

I heard the solemn cries above

Shedding droplets of forlorn love.

I saw a ray as it streamed on by.

Passed my wavering longing eye.

In the gallant bristled light

Tis' where I knew I had to fight.

Slithering in the dark too long

I seek the edge of rhythmic song.

Darkness sought me when I was low

Played the game of revelries blow.

Believing he had the promising cure,

I fell for Lucifer's haunting lure.

His nails felt like a warm embrace

His fire lit my empty face.

Parts of me they tingled within.

Leading me down the road of sin.

It felt so right, so warm and true,

Betrayal a game I never knew.

Lies, deceit the blackened stares

With him my guide I had no cares.

When he had me in his clutch,

Reality hit me I lost too much.

I begged I pleaded for simple release

I wanted refuge, my inner peace.

It was that moment I felt a hand

Reach from Heaven and make me stand.

Brought me forth from the darkened night,

Into the morn of a new dawns light.

Anguish and pain were in the pit

While Lucifer he growled and spit.

Trying to tug me back into his realm

Where he alone could man the helm.

As sweat rolled down my chafing cheek,

Returned my strength no longer weak.

Angels of grace were at my feet…

True Light of love our eyes did meet.

I am the master of my own domain

Truth will abide in Light I'll remain.

No longer a victim, I'm on the mend

Thanks to the Lord my forever friend.

 
**
Job 12: 22 He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.

Quotation Saturday

REFLECTION
 

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
-- T.S. Eliot
 

We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
-- Marcus Annaeus Seneca
 

Look at your past. Your past has determined where you are at this moment. What you do today will determine where you are tomorrow. Are you moving forward or standing still?
-- Tom Hopkins
 

We should learn, by reflection on the misfortunes of others, that there is nothing singular in those which befall ourselves.
-- Thomas Fitzosborne

YOUR WORDS

Be careful; think about the effect of what you say. Your words should be constructive, bring people together, not pull them apart.
--Miriam Makeba
 

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
--Robert Southey

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.
--Michel de Montaigne, translated
 

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered. 
--Graham Greene

TEACHER
 

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called "truth."
--Dan Rather

Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.
--John F. Kennedy

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
--Horace Mann
 

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
--Henry Brooks Adams

WRITER/WRITING
 

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
~Goethe

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

Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
~Samuel Butler
 

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
~G.K. Chesterton

Funny Friday

Eagles may soar in the clouds, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines. 

~Attributed to both Jason Hutchison and John Benfield
***

I always carry a serious aspect of my writing with me throughout my day. I like to be professional while others scamper about acting, well, zany?  I like to laugh just like the rest of you, but there comes a point in your writing career where you just NEED to laugh and see the humor in the mundane trivial aspects of living this life. Not a go-circus-like crazy, just a good chuckle every now and then. Lets see if I can make you smile:

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer.
When asked to define great, he said, "I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!"
 

He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.
***
Typical writer? :
 

A screenwriter comes home to a burned down house. His sobbing and slightly-singed wife is standing outside. “What happened, honey?” the man asks.

“Oh, John, it was terrible,” she weeps. “I was cooking, the phone rang. It was your agent. Because I was on the phone, I didn’t notice the stove was on fire. It went up in second. Everything is gone. I nearly didn’t make it out of the house. Poor Fluffy is--”

“Wait, wait. Back up a minute,” The man says. “My agent called?”
***
 

Baahaahaahaa:
 

A male romance novelist was hiking in the mountains, and he came upon a shepherd who was tending a large herd of sheep that were grazing in the alpine meadow. The writer took a fancy to the sheep, and asked the shepherd: "If I can guess how many sheep you have, can I have one?"
 

The shepherd thought this was an odd request, but thought that there was little chance that the man would guess the exact number of sheep, so he said, "Sure." The writer guessed, "You have 287 sheep," to the shepherd's astonishment, since this was exactly how many sheep he had. The writer got excited and asked "Can I pick out my sheep now?" and the shepherd grudgingly gave his permission.
 

The writer selected his sheep, bent over, and swung the sheep over his shoulders, to carry home with him.
 

The shepherd then asked, "If I guess what your occupation is, can I have my sheep back?"
 

The novelist was a bit surprised by this, but figured that it was unlikely that the shepherd would be able to guess his occupation, and went along with the deal.
 

The shepherd then guessed "You're a romance novelist, aren't you?"
The writer was very surprised and asked, "How did you know?"
 

The shepherd responded, "Put the dog down and we'll talk about it."
***
Lightbulb moment?
 

Q. How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Two. One to screw it almost all the way in, and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.
***
 

Ahhh...
Did you hear the one about the pregnant woman who went into labor and began to yell, "Couldn't! Wouldn't! Shouldn't! Didn't! Can't!"? She was having contractions.
***

So there you have it, you came, you read and hopefully you smiled. Go out and embrace the beauty of this world.
 

 “Don’t get stuck behind a window looking out, you’ll miss the rainbow.” ~Joni Zipp
 

Maybe this world is another planet's hell. ~Aldous Huxley

Computer Woes

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. ~Jacques Prévert
***

As one blessing comes in, one must go. It seems the computer is doing it’s crazy little game playing that I’ve come to expect upon start up every morning. I wake at 5:30 in the quiet peaceful stillness of the morning, the ultimate time to get some writing done, but by 7 a.m. I am still sitting here trying to get this thing to work.

After it finally decides, “I’m warmed up”, it works for everyone else and the muse has slid into the back of my mind, I’ve forgotten what I wanted to write, and so yet another wasted morning of writing has slipped through my fingers.

I remember about nine years ago, when the computer first came into my life. I hadn’t owned one or ever dreamed of having one. I had never used a microwave, my clothes were hung on a clothesline and life was simplified, and I never sought out more. The writing I did was with a pen and paper, and the only markets I sought were poetry contests in the local paper.

At that time, I had not seen the inside of a library for decades, my son was the center of my world and life went on. Although I craved for more, I had no idea that there was a world out here wanting me to embrace the colors and all the beauty. I assumed life was what you make it, and my life was made to be a domestic goddess, a household engineer if you will, or simplified, a housewife.

My husband at the time didn’t ‘let’ me work outside the home and with every job I did obtain (working for family who had business’) my husband became more and more paranoid, untrusting, and downright obsessive. I wanted to run to the hills but I had no license to drive, so where were my two feet going to take me? Not far I can tell you that.

To make a long story short (yes, I’m writing my memoirs) my life changed the day my brother-in-law gave me a computer, FREE! It was then that my writing took off. I searched google like it was an infinite library of sources, I wrote and wrote and spent way too many hours on this thing! So much so, the obsessive hubby tossed me and my son out!

I didn’t turn to my controlling family, I turned AWAY from Baltimore and headed to Texas! Guess what, there was a world out here waiting for me to embrace the beauty and all the magnificent colors of God’s palette. And embrace and move on I did.

Eight years later I sit enthralled in the writing world. I’m allowed to do my work, write, and no one is obsessive about my use of the computer. The ex has not seen his son for eight years, nor paid one red cent child support, which goes to show, I did the right thing in getting out and saving my son. But God also showed me, I was saving my soul.

Now if only I could get this thing to work! *BANG* *knock* *KICK* *pull* *TUG*
Just trying to ‘reboot’!

***

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die. 

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

A Writer's Life

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love. ~George Bernard Shaw
***

Sure we’re writers, but just exactly what is a Writer’s Life? Well, we wallow in words, make sense of sentences, hug our spellcheck when no one is looking, spew lies that we call “fiction”, spit out truths that we call “non-fiction”, we type until carpel tunnel syndrome sets in and we fill a page, or should I say pages and pages with...words!

When the computer is not churning, we’re at a loss as to what we’re supposed to be doing. “Was I supposed to clean the dishes again?” Confusion sets in when we’re not writing. We stand scratching our head in wonderment hoping something will come and make some sense out of the day, but we’re lost.

When the internet is not working, we’re stomping our feet, calling the ‘thing’ names so colorful we want to write them down real quick so we can give our antagonist a voice. Yes, we make our antagonists all the things we will never ever be or would ever say, out loud.

A writers life is not one of sit and spin, where we sit on our butts and spin restlessly in our swivel chairs. Wait, maybe our lives ARE of the sit-n-spin, we sit in our chairs and spin out stories, like spiders building the web of Shelob. (Shelob is Tolkiens spider creation!)

We’re creative, inspiring, smart, intelligent people who spins a web of words for other people to read. Some read, some get bored, some fan through the pages, while some get enthralled with our work.

Now the writers life becomes colored when we try out the publishing world. We then get accepted, rejected, booted, edited or tossed. We’re a tough bunch of people to endure such activity in our lives, by choice no less!

The writer’s life is also piled up with humility. We have to be of a humble nature because we are crawling on the ground begging for scraps of something, anything that the writing community can toss our way, and we feast on the tiny morsels as if we have struck a gold mine of inspiration, and always say, “Thank you kindly,” when someone has obliged us and done us a great service.

We have links to share, to help out the writer; we share other writers triumphs, as we muscle through our own meager triumphs. But I see every day that I wake up, get out of bed and face the day with a newness that only God allows, as a triumph in my writing life.

It isn’t all about writing and making money. Being a writer is a blessing that only other writers can understand and grasp. We are doing what we are called to do, and whatever fringe benefits come along, they are blessings! If none come along, it is still a blessing to be a writer!

***
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

Freedom...

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. ~Mark Twain
***

Today is the Fourth of July and as I sought out the reasons we celebrate the day, I found a lot of bitterness and angst.

We are supposed to be celebrating our freedom, with these words ringing in our ears: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. 
Is this true? Do we treat all men, or women for that matter, equal? Does our nation even believe in a Creator? Do we still have freedoms?
 

I’m not a political person, never was and never will be. I’m not anti-American either but I don’t place my hand on my heart and pledge allegiance to a flag, where the words go on to say, “One nation under God...” I put both hands together and prayer to that God, and that people will wake up from their years of sleep and honor and respect the ONE creator. A flag did not give us ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, the last time I checked.
 

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours. ~William R. Inge

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. What?  Does that mean the government rules the nation and leaves us in the unemployment lines, seeking welfare, raising taxes and dragging our feet and hearts and souls to get out of the abyss we have climbed into?
 

My country is in shambles, we have senators upon senators running the show, many who bare their body parts and seek out prostitutes on a regular basis and think that either they are all powerful and can get away with it, or that they don’t give a crap about the institute of marriage that they signed up for, ‘until death do us part’. It was part the Earth gentlemen not your legs!

These men were voted into office, by like minded people. People have all just thrown  morality out the door. You see, people vote them into office because they look good, sound good and make false promises. They know this and vote them in over and over again, only to spew hate and have a tabloid frenzied party when they don’t do what ‘the people’ wanted.

And we’re proud of this?

When I googled ‘Why we celebrate the Fourth of July’, what came up was parades and firework events, neighborhood block parties and whatnot. What? No talk on American Revolution? No reason why we should honor and respect this ‘freedom’?

The flag to me is to honor and respect the men and women who fight on a daily basis for our country. The very country who, when tight on funds, wants to hold back money from the soldiers, because they are expendable?

My final thoughts on the matter? God...Bless America.

He loves his country best who strives to make it best. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

 

To him in whom love dwells, the whole world is but one family. ~Buddha

Poetry Sunday ~ Peace

Psalm 37:37 Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.

Peace
***
PEACE spreads over me like
an intricate woven blanket
that puts my mind at ease.

HOPE cradles my soul
bringing to life the flame
that carries warmth to the world.

JOY is what I feel as the
synchronicity of being
becomes one in the glory.

LOVE is what absorbs
my being for the human
race that longs.

PRAYER envelops my words
not with wants or needs;
it plants the seeds...
of peace, hope, joy and love!

REJOICE in the everlasting
spiritual realm where we
one day will find...
PEACE.

***

I pray for the people who for one day can not find it in their hearts, buried there waiting, for to come to the surface, what’s called peace. Hatred spews more hatred, degradation brings about more degradation. Love your country, love your neighbor. We’re all in this world together, seeking...PEACE.

Quotation Saturday

WISDOM

"To act and act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait and wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the rising and falling tides (of affairs), so that with nature and law at his back, and truth and beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish wonders. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. Man thus becomes the victim of the tides when he should be their master." -- Helena Petrova Blavatsky

"Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late." 
-- Felix Frankfurter

"To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future." 
-- Plutarch

"True wisdom is less presuming than folly.  The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance." -- Akhenaton

FRIENDS

Sometimes, with luck, we find the kind of true friend, male or female, that appears only two or three times in a lucky lifetime, one that will winter us and summer us, grieve, rejoice, and travel with us.
--Barbara Holland

A friend thinks of you when all others are thinking of themselves.
--Author unknown

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
--Albert Schweitzer
 
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
--Henry David Thoreau

PRAYER
 
Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
 --Søren Kierkegaard

No one is a firmer believer in the power of prayer than the devil; not that he practices it, but he suffers from it.
--Guy H. King
 
Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
--Satchel Paige, 1974
 
We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.
--Oswald Chambers

 
PATRIOTISM
 
I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.
--Abraham Lincoln
 
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
--Pablo Casals
 
Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.
--James Bryce

Love your country. Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love; it is the home that God has given you that by striving to perfect yourselves therein you may prepare to ascend to him.
--Giuseppe Mazzini

Have a Happy and Safe Fourth of July! God Bless one and ALL!