Hmmm...

It has been awhile.

I have written my Daily Poem.

I traveled to North Carolina, to visit family during the kids' spring break, and then entertained more family who came to visit us.


I returned to work, the children back to school. Back to routine, which comforts.

I managed to enjoy the warm days and cool evenings, which lightens my mood.

I heard the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra play its wondrous score for Fantasia seen on the screen.

I found some peace and quiet in my heart, much needed.

I breathed.

What have you been up to these past 10 days?

Peace...

At The Top of Each Breath

Is a moment where air stands still, no inhalation or exhalation, a moment of golden silence.

This is the pause, the place to find yourself, to be.

Find this space.

Then, your lungs push out the air collected, you cannot stop it (the body is a beautiful thing), and your breath shudders through your blood, your skin, from head to toes, and you arrive at the bottom.

Another pause. Another moment to be.

Your lungs breathe in.

It is in these pauses I find peace.

A New Page

That is how the first day of a new year feels to me: a blank page, full of possibility and opportunity.


I am honored to have my short story BREATHE, excerpted from The Minister's Wife, a novel-in-progress, featured at Metro Fiction. Thanks so much to P.J. Kaiser for the opportunity to share this story. It draws from personal experience, one that resonates with many women.


Today marks the beginning of A River of Stones. A month of close observations, of discovering the essence of being. Each observation written, a single small stone which joins the river. My first stone here and HERE, my other blog==> thebluetruedream...

The day breaks shiny and new. Hoar frost glistens, yielding to the sun’s light. Trees throw bare branches into crystalline blue as if to net a bird. Inside, all sleep but me, the quiet broken only by the refrigerator’s hum, the meowing of the cat waiting to come in.



May 2012 being you health, happiness, and peace...

Holy Guacomole

Today someone told me Christmas is in six days.

Six days!

I should've figured it out from all the smarmy music piping from the ceiling while I shopped my local GIANT, all the pointsettias set up on risers, the ring-ring-ringing by the faux Santa outside the entrance. All the lights strung along trees and windows and the outlines of houses, all the Macy-parade-sized Santa and Frosty balloons poofing up at dusk.

Checking my list, and all I see are the 'to-dos': seven 20-page policy papers to read and grade; one student's dissertation to shepherd through defense; one visit to the Food and Drug Administration; six work meetings; two conference calls; and a partridge and a pear tree. And that's just work, and all to be finished by close-of-business Tuesday.

On the home front, well... let's just say cookies galore. And packing galore. And wrapping galore. I think/hope/pray the shopping is finito. But truth be told, I kind of like the end of the year hecticity, it feels so awful while it happens but ooohhhhhhhh soooooooo good when it ends. And there are the little gifts of respite--the nibbling of cookies, cards from far-flung friends, the arrival of mystery boxes delivered by Mr. UPS, a surprise from my husband ==>

I'm not writing a lick, hopes of sending stuff out for end-of-the-year deadlines kind of disappeared like the errant snowflakes spitting on my windshield this morning. But that's okay.

Still, anyone else out there kind of wishing the days would slow down long enough to catch up?

Peace... and don't forget to breathe...

Monday Morning Mantra... BE

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
Rumi

My friend Jeanne, who is a Sufi, reminded me today that when negative thoughts emanate from either side of my head, I am 'out of alignment' with my divinity.

This struck me powerfully - an anxious ennui has possessed me these past months, propelled no doubt by the 72,000 thoughts constant in my brain waging war rather than merely occupying synaptic space. Of course, with a mind so ill-occupied, writing has felt like racing a horse through quicksand.

I've fallen out of my practice of mindfulness, of expelling negativity and replacing it with positivity. This laziness is a natural consequence of the creative, competitive nature of my day and night jobs, both requiring original thought and reactive criticism. But it's my inner critic who mires me, who fills me with doubt and self-loathing and, well, negativity.

Thank you, friend, for reminding me life is a work of art, always changing, always processing. Thank you for reminding me to breathe out the ill winds, inhale the healing air, and take time to - Be.

THE WRITING... Quicksand - remember? Rewriting parts of PURE in third. Scratching out morning words, drabbles, lines of poems. BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT off to my dear beta readers this week. These are the days when I write to write, to get through the words, to keep the practice.

THE READING... Finished COLLEGE GIRL by Weitz. Not sure why I read to the end, hoping (in vain) for the ah-ha. Finishing this book, I sighed with secret relief - I can tell stories. BUT... now I am (happily) immersed in a book that makes me want to weep for the subtle turns of phrase, for the story, for the sweet, doomed characters. And this book is a debut by an indy press and I AM SO SMITTEN!

MISCELLANEOUS... Returned from a trip to our nation's capital. After my all-day meeting at the AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION, I walked for two hours, past the White House to watch the evening news reporters file their stories, past the scaffolding and bleachers, remanants of last week's inauguation, through the Renwick museuem to see some favorite clay and glass pieces, past the Hotel Washington, sadly under complete renovation and boarded up, to the Mall, eventually landing in Borders where I sipped tea and browsed books, doing my small part to prop up the economy. Hubbers and kids joined me the next day; we tooled around in the National Museum of the American Indian and the Air and Space museum. Two delicious days.

Peace, Linda