Dreaming from my Window Above

Dreaming from my 

Window Above

Could she be a world famous author? I could see her from my window on the world.  From this window overlooking the ocean, the view was not of cars hurrying and crowded rows of houses, but a world of flat, shimmering calm water, rocks swimming out from the low cliff.

Each day I watch as she walks the beach to a large outcropping of rocks laid bare by low tide.  As she strolls, she bends over as though to begin an exercise.  Rising gracefully, she stops, purposefully stretches her arm back, gaze on the water. Suddenly, her arm snakes forward.  Following the sudden movement with my own gaze, I see tiny splashes of foam rise up from the calm ocean.  “She’s skipping stones!”  

From my elevated distance, her age is indistinguishable. In miniature, her stature disguised. A teenager? An adult? But of what age? An aura of calm....possibly someone older? Measured steps suggest maturity.  Dark lenses glint when her face turns to the sun. 

I watch this tranquil scene until nudged by the intrusion of the beep-beeping of my wristwatch. Reluctantly, pulling my eyes away from the beach, I review and re-enter the day’s schedule.  

But was she a world famous author?  I don’t really know.  The only thing I know is that when she reaches the giant log wedged against the low cliff, she sits down. Arranging herself, she becomes engrossed in something on her lap. I recognize the posture.  

In a similar posture, at my desk, I write interminable reports and memos. Head bowed, arms resting on the desk's edge, hands holding my work; I stop briefly to stare at nothingness searching for the next right word or phrase.  

The difference?  She sits on a bare log, on the beach and in the sun.  I sit in air conditioned comfort in an ergonomically correct chair, behind a solid oak desk. Dreaming at my living room window at home, overlooking ocean, beach, and tide, I see a very different reason to write. 

At my broad oak desk, I write for someone else.  Up here in my ivory tower, I will write for my own pleasure. 

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable,

and then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”

~ Christopher Reeves

Open Range

Photograph taken from the highway between

Denver City, Tx and Plains, Tx 2005

wide–eyed land

stretching, reaching

as far as the eye can see

homesteads corralled by trees

bunch up the landscape

wild grasses and mesquite grow among great clods

open range worried 

only by bush and cattle,

made fluid by wind in the grass.

"There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul;

we search for it's outline all our lives."

~ Josephine Hart

Writer in Residence

Prologue:  

I am Writer in Residence, 

at my own address 

I am employer, employee 

and all the rest!

~~~~~

'Twas a game I began some years ago ~

Elegantly naming this hobby of mine,

for beginnings or middles or ends on the go.

Just playing at word games of any old kind.

I knew how to write.

I learned that in Grade Two

Essays in high school I wrote late at night!

Nursing school, university ~ more writing to do.

But learning to write so that stories made sense,

was a task I was not quite sure of it’s look.

My curriculum was established with classes and texts

from workshops, seminars and all kinds of books.

I've learned that to keep up this hobby I love

I need - no I like - labels, order and space

My secret - you won’t tell? - is to raise up up above

this hobby of mine and give it a more solid place.

I keep track of my hours and pay when I can,

for this Writer in Residence needs a budget to keep.

For pens, paper, journals and books close at hand,

to be Writer in Residence, I dig very deep.

So you see when I write in my blog each night,

stories and poems or just rambling on,

I’m that Writer in Residence still learning to write

and blessed to have readers like you that read on.

Thank you.

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, 

notes,a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like 

dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”

 ~ Jane Yolen

Remembering... ~ 1

Remembering...

Describing every moment impossible.  

Childhood moments

Teen years

Today  

Gaps huge. 
Gray, pea-soup fog holes with no borders. 

Fog, creeping close to cherished snapshot memories,

burned away by remembered feelings 

Parts of memory pictures. 

Remembering...

joyful freedom

warm prairie sun on young skin  

rushing wind holding me up

balancing on wide spread – and very skinny – legs

in the back of the big grain truck headed west to Milestone, Saskatchewan

Another load of furniture for the farm to fill the spaces around me.

Remembering... 

sleepy hunger

aroma of sizzling bacon blending and turning

with coffee’s delicious aroma 

meeting early morning, melting sleep.  

I hated the taste of coffee then - I sure do love it now.  

Remembering...

breathless awe 

watery, waving mirage that was Lang, Saskatchewan

rising in the east, as if by magic, early on a summer’s morn

gigantic dome sparkling deepening blue from horizon to horizon 

little hill, insignificant in days light,

hiding the prairie town as morning passes

Remembering...

restrained excitement

crisp popcorn smell on Saturday night

delicious, buttery aroma wafting through the summer evening air.  

from Blaney’s popcorn stand across from the old brick Town Hall

Remembering...

shivering fun

winter time

cold freezing humid breath to nose hairs. 

crunch of snow packed by cars and trucks

plumped up slowly with a thick fresh layer drifting down.  

white crystal flakes accompanying me on the short trip to the skating rink

white leather skates laced on 

cutting shiny crystal ice with sharp blades and picks

Remembering...

Today

What will it be?

"Memory is the scribe of the soul."

 ~  Aristotle 
(384BC - 322 BC) Greek Philosopher

'Twitter-pated'

Note:  'twitter-pated' ~ a word uttered
by Friend Owl from the story of Bambi

           'Twitter-pated'

Once upon a time, a tiny, tall old man, spent his life arranging and re-arranging books in a tiny, tall old library. A thick oaken door opened into the old man’s world. The only light was from tall dusty windows and thick wax dribbled candles placed on heavy oaken reading tables.  

Wisps of white hair hovered around his shiny pate. An edge of white dusted his chin.  Stooped shoulders were draped long with a dusty brown shawl. Glancing through a slender children’s book, his perpetual muttering abruptly stopped in a "Hmph!”  

“Twitter-pated? ............   Twitter-pated?!”  

The old librarian set the popular children’s book gently back on the correct shelf in its correct order. Pushing his thick glasses more firmly on his thin nose, adjusting his shawl, his shuffled steps took him to a favourite section of the library. Opening a faded red dictionary, its spine cracking with age, his thin bony finger traced down the page. 

“Of course” he muttered "there is no such word."  

About to close the dictionary, his sharp eye caught ‘Twitter’ and there in the etymology, he saw what interested him:  'from Middle English twiterin and akin to zwizziron of Old High German.'  The definitions were 'chirping' and 'agitation'.  Words fascinated the old librarian and a new thought budded. Maybe, 'twitter-pated' was a word born from some need. Quickly he located ‘pate', which he knew was also from Middle English. It meant the crown of the head and from it was born ‘pated’. He quickly dismissed this odd new word he had come upon.

"What does it matter how those two words could be connected? Just seems like silly nonsense to me." he grumbled.

Closing the dictionary, he heard the tiny bell that signaled that someone was entering the library. Turning slowly towards the door where sunlight brightened the gloom that he and his books lived in, he thought he heard an unusual twittering of bluebirds and robins entwined with a light and cheery "Hello-o-o".  

As his old eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight,  his rigid composure cracked like the spine of the faded red dictionary. This curmudgeonly old librarian was disarmed by the pair of clear blue eyes that met his own hazel eyes. Soft white hair framed her kind oval face in gentle curls. A light brown shawl barely dusted her square shoulders. 

Suddenly, and without warning, the old librarian felt the meaning of ‘twitter-pated’ deep in his heart.

"Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it."

~ Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember

Victimization Traps

I was trapped.

Trapped by the mirror that held me.

I moved to the side and my image was split

I stepped away 

Stepped away from the mirror that held me

My eyes saw a whole new world

I was trapped

Trapped by the situation that held me

Head down, I moved when I was told

Then when I held my head up

just for a moment 

I saw myself in the mirror and smiled.

I saw in my eyes

tired sadness and

strength

I longed to see

joyous energy and

strength

I picked up the mirror

and shoved it aside 

so there was room for me to go.

I stepped past that mirror

Stepped cautiously onto a grand new world

My heart beating ever so fast.

I lifted my head and picked myself up, 

left behind the situation that held me

and forward I moved where I chose.

"This above all.  Refuse to be a victim."

 ~ Margaret Atwood