Roaring...prowling...clawing at the air...my teeth sink into nothing. Restless and irritated at the buzzing of flies, I snap, glaring and red-eyed. I'm daring a fight that won't come. Ah, Gods!
It is the last day of the year...moments ticking away as any other day, but the last of this precise slice of time. I want it over with, and yet, I cling to it with the other had like a child. Not a bad year...nothing like that. Balancing the scale of judgement, it slips between my fingers, spilling everything. And the blood still pounds relentlessly in my ears as a mad drummer in a padded cell...unheard by anyone.
I torment myself and I do it well. Wishing myself awash in canvas and paint, carving out pieces of recognizable dreams from clay chaos. Instead...
I'm choking on words, banging the letters of a keyboard until my fingers bleed. The atmosphere is cloying like a bowl of long dead flowers floating in skum. Funerary in spirit and attitude, we carve the seconds off the old years carcass, pretending it savory instead of sour.
Mourning jewelry has always becomed me.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Isadora
Bend back, arm outstretched, gentle gliding step forward....tilting like the moon in crescent. So much that a simple gesture can bestow and portray of life. 
Thursday, December 18, 2008
My Christmas Miracle - A Lost Best Friend!
It was colder than hell this morning. The sort of cold that freezes the fog and turns it into tiny little ice crystals. It slicked the highway, turning it into a deadly, black sheet of ice. Glitter frost stuck to the sagebrush and cedars up and down the canyon.
I didn't want to go to work.
Walking into the office this morning, I checked the tape back-up and walked to the breakroom and poured myself a cup of coffee. Sitting down at my desk, I opened my company e-mail and found a cute snowman Christmas wish from one of the gals in Corporate in sunny Southern California.
It was the usual cartoony snowmen, kisses, singing, snow people hugging, having snowball fightes and wishing you good things like phone calls from someone far away. It was nice and cute. I passed it on to a couple other people I know. A couple hours passed.
I decided I had a moment to open my personal e-mail and check it. In my in-box was a name from high school...a long-lost, best girlfriend. Time and stupidity, I let her go...and then always wonder what the hell happened and why.
In my case, it had been stupidity. Petty squabbles and heartbreak made me act like an ass towards someone who had been there through some pretty rough stuff...high school. If you say you didn't get a few scars from it, you're either lying or were too stoned to notice.
She and I had a lot of great times together...water balloons tossed down lover's lane, listening to space music in the middle of the night while camping at Strawberry Reservoir, cow pie tossing, outhouse tipping, fishing, sleep overs, sneaking beers and cigerettes, hanging out around town and walking no particular place. I had wondered about her a lot and the rest of the old gang...Nancy, Joe, Terri and Kerri (the twins), Mary, Tammy, Terry S (god! where was he?!).....what had they done with their lives after high school...were they happy...were they ok?
The stupid ending to our friendship came to my mind often. There were a lot of times I really wanted to tell her that I was sorry for being such a bitch. It haunted me throughout the years, as did the memories of all the good times.
When an e-mail came to my box last summer from Reunion.com., I thought, yeah, right! I entered my info anyway, put in a search and thought...What the heck!
This morning, she answered. She was happy and married and had children. She'd travelled. She had wondered about me, too!
I read her tentative sounding e-mail and immediately answered her back. It was the exhileration and excitement of getting something so special...that present you don't really think you'll get, but you tell Santa anyway and sort of cross your fingers hoping really hard it happens.
I poured myself into an e-mail that, of course, got really long and sent it off. A couple hours later at lunch, there was an answer.
We're both blown away at what a wonderful present we got. In my return reply, memories flowed through my mind...summers, winters, times we'd scared the literal crap out of each other with ghost stories and spooky houses. God! It had been 33 years since we had last talked, had coffee in Sambo's, and laughed. Somehow I was transformed in a moment to a girl of 17, and so was she. It was so marvelous! It is so marvelous!
I don't get mushy, mushy, but I cried. This was like "A Christmas Story" and "Stand By Me" all rolled into one! Even better, I got a chance to say I was sorry and she forgave me and still wants to be friends.
I thought about the year in retrospect...My son remarried this year. I have grandchildren now that my husband and I adore. Another friend, Artos has come back into my life after loosing touch with him for 6 years. I wrote earlier about the changes within myself that I was making...things I was allowing myself to do and feel again...taking chances. I really believe that when you open up, something wonderful happens. In my blog of yesterday, "Sincerly", I spoke of anticipation and the ones I love and miss. I had no idea this was coming. What a wonderful Christmas gift!
Now, once again, I want to say, sincerly, thank you for your present, and your forgiveness, and I love you more than words can say!
I didn't want to go to work.
Walking into the office this morning, I checked the tape back-up and walked to the breakroom and poured myself a cup of coffee. Sitting down at my desk, I opened my company e-mail and found a cute snowman Christmas wish from one of the gals in Corporate in sunny Southern California.
It was the usual cartoony snowmen, kisses, singing, snow people hugging, having snowball fightes and wishing you good things like phone calls from someone far away. It was nice and cute. I passed it on to a couple other people I know. A couple hours passed.
I decided I had a moment to open my personal e-mail and check it. In my in-box was a name from high school...a long-lost, best girlfriend. Time and stupidity, I let her go...and then always wonder what the hell happened and why.
In my case, it had been stupidity. Petty squabbles and heartbreak made me act like an ass towards someone who had been there through some pretty rough stuff...high school. If you say you didn't get a few scars from it, you're either lying or were too stoned to notice.
She and I had a lot of great times together...water balloons tossed down lover's lane, listening to space music in the middle of the night while camping at Strawberry Reservoir, cow pie tossing, outhouse tipping, fishing, sleep overs, sneaking beers and cigerettes, hanging out around town and walking no particular place. I had wondered about her a lot and the rest of the old gang...Nancy, Joe, Terri and Kerri (the twins), Mary, Tammy, Terry S (god! where was he?!).....what had they done with their lives after high school...were they happy...were they ok?
The stupid ending to our friendship came to my mind often. There were a lot of times I really wanted to tell her that I was sorry for being such a bitch. It haunted me throughout the years, as did the memories of all the good times.
When an e-mail came to my box last summer from Reunion.com., I thought, yeah, right! I entered my info anyway, put in a search and thought...What the heck!
This morning, she answered. She was happy and married and had children. She'd travelled. She had wondered about me, too!
I read her tentative sounding e-mail and immediately answered her back. It was the exhileration and excitement of getting something so special...that present you don't really think you'll get, but you tell Santa anyway and sort of cross your fingers hoping really hard it happens.
I poured myself into an e-mail that, of course, got really long and sent it off. A couple hours later at lunch, there was an answer.
We're both blown away at what a wonderful present we got. In my return reply, memories flowed through my mind...summers, winters, times we'd scared the literal crap out of each other with ghost stories and spooky houses. God! It had been 33 years since we had last talked, had coffee in Sambo's, and laughed. Somehow I was transformed in a moment to a girl of 17, and so was she. It was so marvelous! It is so marvelous!
I don't get mushy, mushy, but I cried. This was like "A Christmas Story" and "Stand By Me" all rolled into one! Even better, I got a chance to say I was sorry and she forgave me and still wants to be friends.
I thought about the year in retrospect...My son remarried this year. I have grandchildren now that my husband and I adore. Another friend, Artos has come back into my life after loosing touch with him for 6 years. I wrote earlier about the changes within myself that I was making...things I was allowing myself to do and feel again...taking chances. I really believe that when you open up, something wonderful happens. In my blog of yesterday, "Sincerly", I spoke of anticipation and the ones I love and miss. I had no idea this was coming. What a wonderful Christmas gift!
Now, once again, I want to say, sincerly, thank you for your present, and your forgiveness, and I love you more than words can say!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Snow Spell
The Sierra Nevada's need snow and I have been chanting the snow spell I learned it many years ago. A storm is expected to come in tomorrow afternoon and snow is expected for the next 5 days. Let's hope we get a lot of it and then that it keeps on coming.
Goddess Hecate, hear my plea...
Bring the snow here to me!
I've been reciting it looking at the mountains during my daily walk. Yule is nice with snow, but water during the year is much better.
Goddess Hecate, hear my plea...
Bring the snow here to me!
I've been reciting it looking at the mountains during my daily walk. Yule is nice with snow, but water during the year is much better.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Monday, December 08, 2008
The Last Time I Saw Paris...
"The last time I saw Paris....."
.....was in another lifetime.
In the in the last week or so, Paris has being making itself known.
It has surfaced in the books I've been reading, researching art techniques, and popping up in movies on the television. French jewelry, dancing in Paris, eating at certain cafes, dresses, perfumes, dogs....all Parisian...faint and fleeting colors of chalk washing away in the rain.
Yesterday, I sat in my dining room working in polymer clay. The photos I had chosen as the focal points were mostly small reproductions of Mucha posters or cropped bits from Sargeant paintings. I was turning them into Christmas ornaments for friends.
Gold and copper leaf was worked into the translucent clay, marbling and breaking away in pretty patterns with each turn of the press. Flattening the clay and cutting through it to create the frame work, I cut swirls and worked the clay into Art Nouveau twists and curls. Each frame was different...no two are alike due to the coloring, size, and cut of the piece itself. Baked and cured, I glazed the photos and then added loose pearls and vintage rhinestones from the 20's and 30's. Gold thread was attached to the wire hangers and knotted. Ten ornaments in all.
I should have been satisfied with my work. Instead, I was anxous. I have been for weeks now.
Moving about the house, pacing in lion steps...soft and steady. A hot bath and hot milk with allspice, mace and Irish whiskey did nothing for me. I picked up "Isadora" by Fredricka Blair and was inundated with emotions as she made her trek to Paris and then eventually to Berlin and began her romance with Edward Gordon Craig. Teddy.
Slamming the book shut, I thought "Enough of THIS!" Agitation, restlessness and something unnamed. Crawling under the down covers, I sat in bed and wrote in my journal until I began to fall asleep. My pen strokes began to scribble themselves down the page as sleep set in.
Midnight and I had been dreaming of working on ornaments...there was a stress there within the dream...something was making an otherwise enjoyable time feel pushed, pinched, and miserable. I woke feeling stressed and thirsty. I reached for my journal again and wrote of the bits of dream I remembered.
Fooling around with thoughts on paper...self-analysis and unhappiness with things. I push them away from me because I love them too much and can loose myself in them.
It is as if I am on a sea cliff with oceans of things I love...who I really am...what is important to me, lying below.
It would be so easy to open my arms.
So easy.
Breathing them in, I have embraced this feeling before.
I could open my arms to it...
allowing myself to fall into these things
and back into who I am.
I could...am about to... but am so very afraid that it will change me...
but change me how?
That
I will find out.
.....was in another lifetime.
In the in the last week or so, Paris has being making itself known.
It has surfaced in the books I've been reading, researching art techniques, and popping up in movies on the television. French jewelry, dancing in Paris, eating at certain cafes, dresses, perfumes, dogs....all Parisian...faint and fleeting colors of chalk washing away in the rain.
Yesterday, I sat in my dining room working in polymer clay. The photos I had chosen as the focal points were mostly small reproductions of Mucha posters or cropped bits from Sargeant paintings. I was turning them into Christmas ornaments for friends.
Gold and copper leaf was worked into the translucent clay, marbling and breaking away in pretty patterns with each turn of the press. Flattening the clay and cutting through it to create the frame work, I cut swirls and worked the clay into Art Nouveau twists and curls. Each frame was different...no two are alike due to the coloring, size, and cut of the piece itself. Baked and cured, I glazed the photos and then added loose pearls and vintage rhinestones from the 20's and 30's. Gold thread was attached to the wire hangers and knotted. Ten ornaments in all.
I should have been satisfied with my work. Instead, I was anxous. I have been for weeks now.
Moving about the house, pacing in lion steps...soft and steady. A hot bath and hot milk with allspice, mace and Irish whiskey did nothing for me. I picked up "Isadora" by Fredricka Blair and was inundated with emotions as she made her trek to Paris and then eventually to Berlin and began her romance with Edward Gordon Craig. Teddy.
Slamming the book shut, I thought "Enough of THIS!" Agitation, restlessness and something unnamed. Crawling under the down covers, I sat in bed and wrote in my journal until I began to fall asleep. My pen strokes began to scribble themselves down the page as sleep set in.
Midnight and I had been dreaming of working on ornaments...there was a stress there within the dream...something was making an otherwise enjoyable time feel pushed, pinched, and miserable. I woke feeling stressed and thirsty. I reached for my journal again and wrote of the bits of dream I remembered.
Fooling around with thoughts on paper...self-analysis and unhappiness with things. I push them away from me because I love them too much and can loose myself in them.
It is as if I am on a sea cliff with oceans of things I love...who I really am...what is important to me, lying below.
It would be so easy to open my arms.
So easy.
Breathing them in, I have embraced this feeling before.
I could open my arms to it...
allowing myself to fall into these things
and back into who I am.
I could...am about to... but am so very afraid that it will change me...
but change me how?
That
I will find out.
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