Friday, April 29, 2011

Another Year (or Point A to Point B Makes a Line)

Birthdays are sort of like New Year’s Eve – a day to take stock of where you’ve been and where you’re going. This year’s ‘event’ has loomed a bit like a train speeding down a tunnel where there’s no pinprick of white at the end. And now, the day is here and all I can think is, ‘Wow, I breathe. I walk. I think. I talk.’ No big deal, really.

So Point A of the past year started with the sense I needed change, not immediate, not even mid-term, but long-term change. This time last year ennui filled my days, a restlessness, and a desire for something ‘new’. Mid-life, I suppose, and not easily fixable with a sports car (well, maybe a Maserati 420) and certainly I have no desire to trade in my husband or kiddos (I love them all dearly). That caged-in feeling dwelled deep in me, so it was up to me to figure out that hollow-sounding clanging below my diaphragm.

This is what I learned:
--The work I do for pay is satisfying, but it is just… work.
--I get my greatest joy and satisfaction with my family – even if they are individually or collectively driving me bonkers.
--Friends are not what always seem.
--Those who you do not consider friends will surprise you – in the best way – if you remain open to the possibility.
--Happiness comes from within, not without; it is all about attitude.
--I am too quick to anger (hormones).
--Writing is my passion and the single thing that anchors my life beyond my family.
--The best things in life take time.

Point B starts now.
Today. A new beginning, and one heading up to Point C, which is a Big Point. The next year holds a lot of promise. Once again, it all begins with me. My resolutions for this upcoming journey include:
--Let the crap roll off my back (where crap = office politics, other people’s bad manners, kids’ temper tantrums, rejections).
--Spend more time listening (and save money on the cream I use to reduce wrinkles around my lips).
--Strive for better balance between demands, and always do what is important first (my father always said – pay the piper first).
--Spend more time with girlfriends.

And to zap the ennui, I am applying to graduate schools for writing. I have four ‘top tier’ programs in mind -- three low-residency, one a local part-time. The application process evokes all these horrible memories of college and graduate school applications – official transcripts, essays (why I want to go into a writing program, blah-blah-blah), and what really terrifies – letters of reference! Ack! This is one time when I truly wish the ‘writing is everything’ adage held true.

I’m looking forward to a productive year and one less filled with inner turmoil. Thank you for sharing the journey with me. Peace…

P.S. If you are looking for my #fridayflash #52/250 #napowrimo weekly contribution, please wander: HERE

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Can't Wait @ Monkeybicycle

My manic one-sentence story CAN'T WAIT up now at MONKEYBICYCLE. A huge thank you to Steven Seighman for publishing my work. Peace...

Thursday, April 21, 2011

cold

when the doctor came,the room stilled, a sterile still life colder than the air used to keep the machinery bleating and pushing blood through my arteries, the frigidity
keeping engines cool from shorts that would gum wires and tubes and send electric shocks down lifelines to the system, my system, and when he shook his head, a brief motion, the air grew colder yet and heaved my heart into a pulsing mass of valves and vessels, one last gasp before it puttered into a puddle of tissue, of hope gone south



***

Inspired by the 52-250 Flash A Year theme: cold front. A prose poem as we ease into the home stretch of NaPoWriMo. Peace...

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The Universe -- and Beyond

This will put you in awe...



The latest from Terje Sorgjerd, a photographer who also recently caught amazing footage of the Aurora Borealis. The time-lapse footage was captured between April 4th and 11th, 2011, from atop El Teide, Spain's highest mountain. At one point a sandstorm blows across, which rendered Sorgjerd unable to see the sky, but left his camera with some stunning images. Via HuffPo (18 April 2011) via my husband. Peace...

Sunday, April 17, 2011

raleigh before the tornado hits

Cresting the inner loop
after seven hours of slick asphalt,
the city stretches before us
shrouded in haze the yellow
of nicotine stains. Trees droop
still as skyscrapers, the radio spits
static. In the rearview black clouds
churn, the children sleep, and I
press the gas until my foot goes numb.


***

The kids and I arrived about 15 minutes before the tornado touched down in Raleigh. At least three died in the city limits, and many homes and businesses suffered major damage. Tornados continued to wreak havoc throughout the state, with more lives, homes, and hopes lost. Peace to all...

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Tainted Love


Tainted love is stained love, a dirty jeans love, mucky
under nails and knees from garden dirt and worms
slippery, slickery things compost-heaped, grubs chewing love.

Tainted love is tinted love, a greyer pink love, edges purple
from necrosis, halitosis, the lack of osmosis, a hypoxia
of the heart hardened boundaries kind of love.

Tainted love is skinny love, skinned and thinned weak
broth love, fight veneered, resentment adhered, salty-teared
nicotine-laden cloud love, breathed in and cancerous.


***

Inspired by National Poetry Writing Month and the 52-250 Flash a Year Challenge theme: tainted love.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Rules for Surviving Eighth Grade @ Eclectic Flash

I am honored one of my micro-fictions has found a wonderful home in the Spring Issue of ECLECTIC FLASH. Take a peek at page 62, then travel to poems and stories by some of my favorite writers, including Laurita Miller (page 84), Meg Tuite (page 80), JP Reese (page 53), and Jan Knox (page 43). A HUGE thanks to editor Brad Nelson who consistently turns out beautiful issues of some best flash and poetry found on the web.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

blind

what world is this

when in the parking lot

a man squeezes

breakfast

from catsup packets

his girl squats

by Xerox boxes

she calls home

and you send back

your triple-slam

with yolks too runny?


***

Inspired by the 52-250 Flash a Year Challenge theme: blind spot. And the daily walk from subway to office where the fall-out from the economy multiplies like bunnies. Peace...

Monday, April 04, 2011

April Showers

bring word powers.

'tis National Poetry Writing Month. I'm writing my daily -- are you?

Peace....

Friday, April 01, 2011

A Delicate Flower

by Dan Powell

One day, though not a suspicious person by nature, Claudine decided to spy upon her husband. He had been coming home late more often than not in recent weeks and had been less than attentive for a good deal longer. Though she tried to dismiss the former as simply the outward effect of increasing pressure at work in a difficult economic climate and the latter as nothing more sinister than the natural cooling of their relationship into something harder and more lasting in readiness to weather their final years together, she couldn't shake her deepest fears free from her thoughts.

Unable to confront him she hid in his office as a vase of daffodils, perching unobtrusively on the window sill early one morning. She watched his work day marveling at the tedium of it as he shuffled his way through files and interminable phone conversations with someone called Derek. He disappeared at lunchtime and she turned her trumpeted, petaled heads to the window and watched the clouds. She thought of their life together, up till now an uncomplicated, some might say dull history, unfettered by children or commitments beyond those they had sworn to each other long ago; in short a simple, pretty, quiet little life.

The office door opening and a hushed voice shook her from her reverie.

'But you will tell her, won't you. Soon.'

And Claudine watched unable to move as her husband closed the door behind himself and his secretary, a woman Claudine had met many times before, watched him take her face in his hands and kiss her in a way Claudine could only barely remember being kissed.

'I will,' she heard him say, 'I promise.'

And with those words, unable to distinguish between the betrayal, the blatant cliche of the situation, and the heat from the midday sun blazing at her back, Claudine wilted.

***

APRIL FOOLS!!!!! The fabulous story you read appears here as part of the Great April Fool's Day Friday Flash Blog Swap(GAFDFFBS) organized by the exuberant Tony Noland. Dan Powell, a marvelous writer based in Germany, created A DELICATE FLOWER. You can find my story Divine Wind -- and more of his fiction -- at his website Dan Powell - Fiction. We both wrote based on the prompt: wilted flowers.

To read all the dozens of stories swapped around as part of the #GAFDBBS, check out the index at Tony's blog Landless. For more fantastic flash, check out #fridayflash on twitter. We flash every Friday.

Happy Day o' Fools, and peace...