I have a new plan for getting things done (see recent
blogs) thanks to Forever and LK who helped. Last
night made an overall list of things that had to be done before the first of the year; then I made a list of things that must be done this week and then today. I have been trying to finish three poems for two weeks and feel this is getting out of hand. Since I am somewhat of a news junkie, it is imperitive that I listen at certain times, or at least keep CNN on in the background. This is a distraction that I must learn to live with. I'm always afraid something somewhere is going to get bombed amd/or someone is going to get killed and I won't know. I do know this is totally irrational because I would know -- someone would call me, or there would be a CNNBreaking News on the PC. Nevertheless, I have to live with my obsessions, and incorporate them into my daily life. I also read, but not as much as I did before I joined Writing.com.

Yesterday I had a routine doctor's appointment at 11:00. The receptionist assured me I would not have to
wait. I was there promptly. I saw what is known as the "Physician's Assistant" and was out of there by l:30. I did catch up on some reading at that the, but I wonder why they bother to make appointments. When in a different mood, a less tolerant and peaceful one, I will ask why that question. I get a glare in return. or a "Well, we are very busy today." Harrrruuummmppphh. There has to be a better way. How do you handle this?

I have Writing.com problem I thought I'd share. I frequently bid at Writing.com auctions and then end up winning a bid or two, send my points in immediately, and hear not a word from the person who is to do the reviews, give an Awardicon, etc. I've never not gotten a sig, I will say that, but the other mystifies me and I wonder if this happens to others, and what I should do about it. I always write the contest owner once, and then just let it go. But this time I am thinking about going to The Story Master, which seems a not-so-nice thing to do. I just wonder how widespread
this non-fulfillment of obligations practice is. Any advice would be appreciated.

Other than that, or even with that, I am looking forward to getting lots done today, and I hope you do too. Life seems good!

Sara



 

It's raining again in the Sunshine state. But that's okay. There's enough sunshine inside me to brighten the entire coastline.

I sure haven't put anything new in my portfolio lately. I have two or three things on Word but they aren't right yet. I promised myself I's take tomorrow off and work them at least into some kind of proper draft. Do you make lists of goals? Do you keep them? Do you give yourself rewards when you keep them?

Seems like there is nothing at all new so this is going to be a pretty blah entry. That's how I feel lately. Blah. I don't know how a healthy hearty woman in her mid-40s can be so friggin tired all the time. Okay. I'm going to the doctor Monday at 11:00.

But first, there will be great prose from these fingers which can't type right anymore. I have to go very slowly. Some of the letters have worked off the keys - r, i, l, and n. Maybe since this is a black keyboard I could use white out, remember white out? If you do and you still have some around, could you maybe send me a little? Thanks.

Gonna keep it short tonight. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Sara


 

Blogging has changed my routine too. I review a lot less than I used to. This is more like free writing, and yet I still keep a journal and pen on my night stand for those middle of the night moments when great insight is given to me. LOL.

Seems like everthing is back in full swing around here. There are contests galore, raffles, auctions, anything you want, especially good listeners, as well as good writers. Feels good. I like it.

November has always been one of my favorite months. The change of the weather to winter brings about interesting colors in the skies, and here in St. Augustine, the water suddenly gets to cold to even tip-toe into. The trees are almost stripped of their colorful leaves, and the bare branches remain, agape to the sky, waiting for whatever the heavens have in store for them. Sometimes they look to me like nerve ends, the nerve ends of my body; but this is only when I am really feeling stress. Here in NE Florida the Spanish Moss never goes away, through hurricanes, rain,
wind, and whatever else, the Spanish moss is there. Some say the first settlers (after the Indians, of course, who aren't counted in any history book I've seen) used Spanish moss as bed and pillow stuffing. Others say the Spanish Moss contains little tiny mites that will eat away at you while you are resting or sleeping or whatever. I personally have never used Spanish Moss as pillow stuffing, but I have used it to pack presents that I send up North into boxes. It just seems more aesthetically pleasing than plastic bubbles. People have called and said "What is this stuff?" but no one has ever mentioned getting mites.

Well, here we are one week later and I'm just barely used to the time change. It sure gets dark early and stays dark late. Suddenly, this year. Gives me time to write a short story about magic which I've been thinking about for a while, and then I saw Kit's contest, so that should made me do it. Happy magic. I think it is an interesting comment on our times that the Goth movement is so popular. I am not sure what that comment means, but I know it must be interpreted by sages, seers, and astrologers and then we will know. Are there any majis out there?

Are we all doing to get Asian bird flu and die this year? Is that what all this hype is about, or is it more of this administration scrare tactics? I just heard that 75% of Americans do not think they are going to get Asian bird flu. It is the medical profession that wants to be ready in case this particular strain of flu does cross the ocean and become, not an epidemic, but a pandemic.

Hope you are having a wonderful evening.

Sara
 

I've been up since before dawn because of the time change, and it is so wonderful to get up at that hour. Everything is so dark and so quiet and consequently so peaceful that I walked outside in the grass and breathed deeply the cool, Autumn air.

I watched horror movies last night, man of them. My favorite is "The Exorcist II", and I admit I am partial to Richard Burton. This film always brings sprightly discussions about Catholicism, and this time was no exception. What a crew of friends! From all different avenues and all with different ideas, but most of them not believing in exorcisms at all. Except me. I won't rule out anything. I think people can be possessed. I also think that there are Priests that can rid the possessed of his or her demon(s). I think if they would get to the serial killers, for example, before they begin to kill, they might end up okay.

Other than those films, and snooping around the site all morning, I've done little except make resolutions. It's a new month and a new season, and I'm determined to become more of a hermit and get more writing done. I also demand of myself a more frugal lifestyle. Seeing that beautiful sky this morning and feeling the presence of the animals hidden in he bushes and heavy oak trees I just felt truly sad at how much human beings have destroyed. I suppose this, too, is evolution of a sort; we have involved into billions and billions of people who inhabit the earth and use the earth primarily for industry (big buildings) and housing. I am sure the percentage used for farming has been reduced year by year. I'm happy that I am here now to enjoy what's still here. I think it will only get less and less.

78% of the American people believe in an afterlife. That is amazingly high to me. The scientists are trying to prove it. It wasn't clear to me from the article just how they were going to do this, but I wish them well.

I thought I was having great dreams until I saw Meagan's in "Exorcist II". She really had great dreams. Falling endlessly between very tall brick buildings that are found only in large cities and once time I think she fell down Fifth Avenue in New York from Central Park to Washington Sauare, as if the earth had been tilted. These were not especially startling special effects -- it's not a new movie -- but they worked. The plot's a little shakey, but what the hell, it's Halloween, and Halloween's a little shakey. I'm sure there will be many films on today and tonight, but what I am really looking for is the history of Halloween. How it got started. Is it only in the United States? (I can't imagine that since American Capitalism seems to have spread its wings, all due respect to the birds, across the planet.) Tuesday is All Saint's Day and I think Halloween was originally All Hallow's Eve. I'm not sure I know what I am talking about.

Have any of you used the software that is available for writing books? You know -- write your novel in 30 days! Use our program. Only $99.95. I don't really have an extra hundred dollars but I am curious as to what those programs are about.

You know how we worry about hooking the reader in, either with the first sentence or two, or the first stanza. Well, there exists or existed a writer in England who wrote his/her last line first and built the story up that way. I have never tried this somewhat unusual method of working, but I have written poems where I took the first line and made it the last, and it worked wonderfully. It made the poem make sense. I am not recommending that anyone do this consistently, but maybe if you are having trouble with beginnings, you might at least try it.

So I shall leave you sending clean, crisp Autumn air, trees and curtains billowing in the mild breeze, sun shining in a light blue sky, and, hopefully, peace in your hearts.


 

I thought I'd just missed one day, but apparently not. Computers do not lie, right? They just make mistakes.

I wonder what I've been doing all this time. Reading, partially; not novels, unfortunately, but "How To" books -- How to Write Dialogue, How to Get Great Plots, etc. That took up a few hours and I decided it was pretty much wasted.

I've been socializing, and I've overdone it a bit, I think for me. Dinner out last night and tonight, and lunch out today. I don't like to eat out as much as I did when I was younger. The food isn't as good, it seems; and, I have some restrictions in what I can and cannot eat so that is somewhat limiting, but usually not a problem. If you go to a "nice" restaurant here, for two it's about $75. If you go to a 4-star restautant here, for two it's about $125, both prices plus drinks and tips. I find this ridiculous.
But, then, I find the path that the world -- or at least the United States, which, believe me, I understand is not the world -- is taking is frightening, sad, unnecessary and perverse. But what do I know. I'm an crazy old woman. Talk to teen agers, late teens, and 20-somethings. They're going to make thousands of dollars a week in a few years. They believe this, and I believe this. I'm not quite sure how this gets done, but I have seen two daughters of friends do it, and one son of a friend well on his way to being the Donald Trump of NE Florida. Only one of these three went to college, and she is a lawyer with a very large firm in Boston and New York. When I was that age this was unheard of. People were not born poor and then become billionaires by the time they were thirty. I guess I am older than I think I am. I missed someting.

I still understand books, however, and can get a great deal of enjoyment out of a poem, a book, a work of art. I can still sit and watch the ocean for hours and hours, and be very grateful I am alive. Somewhere I traded something for something and I don't really remember when or where or what happened, or anyone warning me that I was at a fork in the road and I'd better make a conscious decision. Oh well, no big deal. I don't know what I'd do if I were worth a billion dollars. Or even a million. It is beyond the scope of my understanding -- well, a billion is. A million maybe I could handle. It's not gonna happen so I might as well forget it. The whole thing. Go back to saying Ommmmmm, Ommmmm, or something akin until I calm down.

Still no cigarettes. I still do not feel any different however. I sleep better, and have nicer dreams. Huh! I hadn't thought of that until right now. I have been sleeping better, wake up with no aches and pains, and my dreams have gotten more like I want them to be like. It's gotta be from the writing, doesn't it, and not the lack of nicotine?

I'm judging two contests this month and there are a lot of entries. We've got some really potentially good writers coming up. I hope they stay.

Pop Culture and High Culture. Do they mix? Are they meant to be mixed? Do you enjoy Jim Morrison more because you've read Nietzche? What if I throw a little theology in there? Rumi, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Deepak Chopra. This sounds like a silly game of some kind, but I don't mean it that way. It's just that many of us, and maybe most of us, have read many different things, and been different places, and have had different experiences, and I wonder if that all enhances our aesthetic enjoyment of the world or not. And what about science? Who reads science journals, Scientific American for example, in order to become more "well rounded"? Is it still possible to be a Renaissance Person, since this is definitely a Renissance age (because of technology)? I wonder about that; and I often wonder about the relationship beteween "High Culture" and "Low Culture". I have for many years. I think I should come to some kind of conclusion soon.

Talk to me, please.

 

This has been a pretty good weekend. I sure have seen and talked with a lot of people, which I hadn't seen or heard from for a while, and that's always nice. Did a little reviewing but it didn't feel right. I don't know if that is me recovering from this blankety-blank bronchial condition or if it is something else like being moved up to Preferred. Some say that changes your attitude. I think I'll stop listening to stuff like that and enjoy.

Wilma's going to cross Florida tonight I think, and then make its way up north. There's another storm behind it, Alpha. I really maintain that the benefits of living in Florida do not outweigh the burdens. Of course, everyone is different and one wo/man's burden is another wo/man's benefit.

Still can't break out into song. Am getting tired of it too. I know its from the bronchitis because if I'm up more than two hours I fall asleep. In that two hours I eat and answer emails. No temperature at all so that's good. I've decided NOT to write a Halloween story or anything scarey this year; my spirits are too good, so I'm going to try to carry that good energy over into Christmas. I'm hoping to go up north for Christmas but there are a lot of variables: the weather for one, the current feeling about terrorism is another, and money, of course, is another.

Today which I think marks the fifth week of not smoking has been the hardest yet. It maybe because I am restless. I had planned to help Terry with this paper, but that didn't work out, and I don't feel like watching TV or playing games; just that kind of lost feeling that sometimes comes over me at the weekend's end, when I know that tomorrow all will be back to normal in the outside world, which I feel less and less a part of.

If you want something that might amuze you Google "failure".

I have a close friend who is trying to get her mother into a nursing home. My friend's son and his wife are here and are a big help. Mimi, the mother, is really out of it and takes infinite patience. I keep wondering why we live that long, to become burdens and fill senior citizens centers and lose things and not remember what has just been said and fight giving up our independence when we know that we can no longer take care of ourselves. What is this for? How can this kind of ending, which I believe is by far the majority, serve man or God or anything else except the medical industry. I've known Mimi about ten years and have seen the gradual degeneration, and it is heartbreaking. The only good thing is that I hope Mimi does not realize just how far she has gone. It's really a devastation, on a scale not near the Gulf Coast hurricane or the Pakistan earthquake, but it is in a microcosm of sorts of that huge vast desecration which Nature is capable of. She is doing it again with my friend's mother. I wonder if the theologists know or have an insight into why.







 

Spent most of the morning sorting out papers, and got quite a bit thrown out, which feels good, I must say. I have a problem with written letters, however, especially since I think they are going to be extinct pretty soon with all the email going on. Then friends started calling and calling and dropping by and all of a sudden it was 6:00 and that's how the day went - poof. I did promise my college-going pal that I would help him do a paper with MLA formatted footnotes that is pro-euthanasia. Why do I get myself into these things? I think it's because when he calls and says he got an A I get that warm and fuzzy feeling we all know so well that comes from helping someone.

I'm still not smoking, and want to thank Voxxylady for the Merit Badge. It was so perfect and such a surprise. Grace Under Pressure. I love it. Now I can't go back to smoking.

Other than that didn't do much today. The papers on the top of the pile are the ones I'm currently working on, however, and that's a change for the better. The pressure of the holidays is already starting. I went to Winn-Dixie today and it is full of Santa Clauses and candy canes and all sorts of happy holiday merchandise to sell. It's not even Holloween yet. Why do I complain? It happens every year and I should be used to it. It's no great surprise.

I notice there is a couple on TV that moved their wedding up a few hours to escape Wilma's wrath. I'm trying to get a different grip on post-modernist narrative theory and how deconstruction helps us read between the lines of our own free writing. I think there is a connection somewhere in there but it will have to ruminate a bit.

I think I'll call it a night and trundle off to bed. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and that you've had a good day today.

I have to get back to being more productive.

Ciao
 

Another day with little done. Read all my emails and answered them, read a lot of blogs, reviewed a little, but compared with what I want to do or have done in the past,I am lacking. I don't know if I feel worse because I am not smoking, or if I am a little tired still from being sick. What difference does it make? I did the best I could, and tomorrow have to go out to lunch, but that will be time well spent. My companion is on the faculty at Flagler College, a small liberal arts college here; small but highly esteemed.

A woman in San Francisco apparently threw her children over the bridge, and there is much discussion about all those mothers who have gone before her who have done the same thing. It seems to me that this goes back to Green and/or Roman mythology. I can't recall anyone in the Bible doing this. I think I'll research this. I'm not sure why. I think it is because I want to know if this is endemic to Western Civilization. I have the same question about serial killers. I think basically I wonder just how much stress a human being can take, if indeed that is the cause, and if it is indeed the stressful, civilized West that gives fertile ground for such atrocities. I'll work on this and get back to you. Meanwhile, all comments are welcome and appreciated.

I did have coffee in a sidewalk cafe today. Everyone is talking about hirricane Wilma, the most powerful storm ever. I guess the last three have each one by one broken records. Anyway, these people were talking about the fourth dimension and how peaceful it is there. I caught only pieces of the conversation, enough to decide they were most likely New Age Believers, but they were saying that this is only a training ground for what comes afterward.

It's just a little past eleven o'clock at night and some wonderful people have brought a key lime pie over. We have a temperature of 82 but with a heat index of 94 -- something to do with Hurricane Wilma. In her honor, I shall stuff myself. Coffee is already being prepared.

I wish you were all here to join us; we are a small group of people who live in downtown St. Augustine and do what we do -- write, paint, read, sculpt, run galleries, work at day jobs to keep the passion of the art alive. Some of us are old and some are just out of high school, but I'm glad they're here. As I said, I wish you were also. Key lime pie is very special, as is each and every one of you.

Ciao
 

I can't seem to get back on schedule, but I will tomorrow, I promise myself. It's not writers' block. it's disorganization. There seem to be papers everywhere, half finished stories here, half of a poem there, a thought - mind you a thought - a great and precious thought - on another piece of paper carefully placed under my glass that holds my paintbrushes, Why am I such a pack rat? I remember when I was young (oh come on...it wasn't that long ago!) the painters had to carry around all these canvasses and they were awkward, and I thought to myself, I'm glad
I want to be a writer. The same for sculptors - they had these pieces of marble and stone, and welding glasses and huge studios. Me, I would just go and sit under a tree in Washington Square Park and write away. I have moved several times in my life, not only within the City, but from country to country, overseas and all, and I have still accumulated this bunch of scraps and half finished junk. I think it was Malcolm Lowry who went insane after his manuscript caught on fire, and ever after that writers began putting their written words in the freezer of the refrigerator because that it where it is least likely to burn.

These papers aren't all of my thoughts on things. They contain letters from friends over the years, rejection slips, postcards. In one box I found several poems that I changed very little and put in my portfolio. Do you all do that? Do you keep papers all about or are they neatly organized? One time I lived in Westbeth and I had an apartment and a separate studio and that worked. Things were neat and tidy and alphabetized and organized. That was right before I went to Africa, and put most of these files
in a storage bin, which I had to keep paying on as I kept staying longer. Eventually I got everything back in one place and now I am about ready to move again. I will see the world from new angles, up high, not sea level. I've loved the beach, believe me, and I'm a real casual laid back kind of woman, which is probably why these papers are all over the place annoying the bejesus out of me (where did that word come from -- bejesus?).

See, I'm wandering on and on. I've been this way all day. I'll be better tomorrow. I'll review and that will get me back into discipline. Promise.

Ciao.
 

One thing about not feeling too good is that when you start feeling better and finally know that you are well, it's the most wonderful feeling one can have, and if you have this feeling along with being in love you are really blessed. I am, as you can probably tell, feeling much better, and all is under control. Even the weather has cooled off here in
NE Florida and I can sleep with the windows open. Yeah! It's the little things in life that count. Simple pleasures, which come to think of it is the name of a day spa here in ye olde tourist town. If it's the little things in life that could, then why say "Don't sweat the small stuff?" Now which is it?

Somehow I have got to get back to where I was before I started feeling badly, and it'll take a few days, I think, and then it will all fall into place. Tis Halloween, or nearly, and ghouls and ghosts are starting to appear all about. I'm one of those people that thinks ghouls and ghosts appear during the day, and at any time of the year. A friend of mine's mother died, and when he was troubled bysomething she would appear and let me know. I'm not sure as yet what I think about angels; except that I think they are
around us, and that we have two each guarding us. I'm not sure I can talk to them though (I didn't talk with my friend's mother either). Yes, I definitely think that more exists than meets the naked eye. What a silly phrase -- naked eye. What else would an eye be? I guess it could be glass, or have a patch over it, or some are blind. It's a
curious expression. Maybe I'll Google it.

Do you know what author has a Dewey Decimal Number assigned just to that author, and no one else can have the number? I think it's 822.33. Yes, that's it. I'll tell you tomorrow if nobody guesses.

I really want to thank all of you who have sent cNotes, prayers, encouragement and healing energy. Every bit of it helped, and I realize again what a wonderful group we are on Writing.com. We may not all be Nobel Laureate material, but we sure are good people. If I had my choice, I'd take the latter.

Ciao