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 |    Online journal capturing the moment and the memory of moments. A meadow meditation. |
   L'aura del campo 'é a lua, é a lua, na quintana dos mortos' ♣ Federico García Lorca ♣  L'aura del campo. A breeze in the meadow. So it began the last day of Spring, 2005; on the 16th day of the month of Light of the year 162. This is a supplement to my daily journal written to a friend, my muse; notes I do not share. Here I will share what the breeze has whispered to me. PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS! I L  V COMMENTS!On a practical note, in answer to your questions: IN MEMORIUM VerySara  passed away November 12, 2005 Please visit her port to read her poems and her writings. More suggested links:  These pictures rotate.   Kåre  Enga~ until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go. ~ Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish |
| Mission ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... Statement BCOF: Do you have a mission statement? If so, what is it? If not, what would you say if you were to write a mission statement? Absolutely. I'm stealing from Prosperous Snow celebrating  . Her eloquent explanation is found here: "Mission Statement"  I believe in the Oneness of Humanity... and my life will continue to embrace this belief as I encourage communication across any barrier, visible or not. The issue becomes details. Mission Statements are broad. In the past, I brought people physically together at parties and gatherings to break through barriers. I had definite objectives and achieved them. Now I continue to struggle how to connect either with writing or travel. Some is for personal pleasure, but I'm constantly connecting when I write a story of poem for a specific person or group of people. I discussed this with Kat just yesterday; I've done it often. And travel? Sharing experiences, both teaching and learning. I'm not dead yet! Facebook has become a problem as people think that shouting at each other is acceptable. I disagree. I need to foster communication and eloquence, as in: "I like/don't-like it when so-and-so says such-and-such because it's-a-lie/false/hurtful/etc. based on personal-experience/facts/verified-sources Blogville is tricky. I will continue to comment as much as I can, realizing that I won't get many comments back. That saddens me, but I will persist. This is the last blog entry of this series. Not sure where I'll go from here, but I'll keep you posted. At the moment I'm listening to NRK Sápmi out of Karasjok, Norway. (Find it at Radio.garden) 102.847 |
| No ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... prompt I'm not going to join any blog challenges or groups for July. Some of the prompts have been easy-for-me, others have been pushing-my-boundaries, some were sheer misery. So... I'm going prompt-less for a month. And I might even miss a day!  I'm still burnt out and unhappy. Dreams about moving back to Kansas and giving up traveling... or traveling and giving up everything else should show you where I'm at. Plus, I really really want to redo my blogs before I start traveling again as travel sucks up any spare energy. On that note... I'll try to keep up with reading blogs because I truly think it helps to know you are being read. And... I'll need to borrow a thought or steal an occasional prompt. Today's bizarre flash fiction:
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| Kindness ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... has many names Today, write about an experience that wowed you. When was the last time your jaw fell open? Where were you the last time you felt awe and admiration? As best you can, share your experience in a way that your blog reader can feel the same wonder you felt. Recipient of: ![Merit Badge in Aloha
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I really appreciated reading your entries in the Unofficial June Summer Sprint for the [Link To Item #30DBC] ! Especially your final entry where you spoke so eloquently about an act of Aloha. I love this quote: “clothed by oaks and populated with deer, ticks and turkey.” Great imagery! I also wanted to thank you for commenting so regularly on other’s blogs *^*Heart*^* You are a joy to have in the competition!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Aloha-2171989_14.gif) earlierblog Tahlequah speaks in the soft cadence of Cherokee. The Creek burbles over stones where crawfish hide in Sequoyah Park. July's sun fries me as I sit along its cooling banks. I stay in a motel hoping I can find a job and a place to live before my money runs out. I'm invited to visit Sparrow Hawk Village overlooking the Illinois River, a community of esoteric Christians clothed by oaks and populated with deer, ticks and turkey. I'm not interested in joining but the people are nice. I explain my situation. I need healing. I'm introduced to Donna, a Choctaw with three children living with a rottweiler in a trailer. She decides to take me in. Lord knows why. My white Volvo, loaded with scraps of a life, heads north on Route 82A past the post office in Moodys, down the winding shady canopy of Long John Hill where I'll know what's hiding by the day's roadkill. I cross Spring Creek with it's dry bed of flint rock waiting for the deluge to revive it. Three trailers sit below the road. Donna lives in the middle one: three bedrooms with a kitchen on the south-west end. I move into a tiny room and I pack my belongings in the closet. The air conditioning freezes me. I am thankful. I have arrived in Teresita a nowhere place with an old cemetery where pillars engraved with aguyuh rest covered with lichen. There's not much else. I take a walk. So much is hidden in rocky crevices by green that no one disturbs. The scissor tailed fly catchers and crows cross my path. Occasional gunfire pierces the quiet. I need quiet. Kindness has many names here. May my healing begin. Written at the request of Connie, the flash non-fiction is found at:
102.804 |
| Unexpected ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... Surprise? From South Point, we head north to visit the volcano responsible for building the island. Kilauea has been continuously erupting for the past 36 years. We board a small boat and motor to the place where the lava spills into the ocean, boiling the water and erupting steam into the air. The lava flows are slow and deceptively innocent, but their power to destroy is great and we are careful not to get too close. Our guide reminds us, however, that equal to the lava’s power to destroy is its power to create. In your blog today, share something unexpected. Have you been surprised by someone or something recently? When I travel I'm dealing with new sights and sounds constantly. So much so that little surprises me. 1. Visiting where my family came from in Sweden. There was little to nothing there. 2. Cape Town, South Africa. Utterly stunning. Too bad I didn't feel safe. 3. Portugal in general. How well I fit. 4. Speaking a few words of Norwegian in Albania and Macedonia. Small world. 5. How nothing ever looks how you imagine it. On facebook today, someone I know in Costa Rica actually read my flash fiction and commented! This heartens me because as a writer I want to be read. It's one of the reasons I comment so much. It doesn't cost me to show support for other writers. Volcanoes... I've seen a few. I'd love to see the pahoehoe flows of Kilauea. And 'a'a as well, though I must admit that personally I'm a bit more explosive. Been to a few volcanoes in Costa Rica: Irazú, Poas, Rincón de la Vieja, Arenal, Barva. I like visiting when they aren't in eruption. Mud pots are fine but hot lava underfoot (Arenal '74) is dangerous and sulfur eruptions (Poas) treacherous. So the jigoku (hells) of Beppu in Japan were more my style. I'd love to visit a kipuka (island of trees surrounded by lava flows) in Hawai'i as I wrote a poem about them and I'd like to experience them firsthand. I like places where life persists. It gives me hope with my own struggles. |
| No thrills ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... for me We’re taking a trip today to the southern most point in the entire United States. South Point on the Big Island of Hawaii is a popular daredevil destination where brave souls leap from the cliff into the churning ocean below. Are you (or were you ever) a thrill-seeker? Do you visit carnivals or theme parks? What do you do that gets your heart pounding? Have you ever had a brush with death? No. No. Hmm. Yes. No. I'm not a thrill seeker. I'm not into carnivals and I seldom have visited theme parks. Scrambling up the side of a crumbling shale gulch (or sliding down between trees) is as close as I got when much younger. I don't like water; don't swim. I have bad vertigo, so edges bother me to the point I go stiff. Heights? Don't ask. Roller-coasters make me sick. Most any threat gets my heart pounding. So does running to catch a train. I don't seek out these moments. Does having a gun at my head count? Or so he said... I called his bluff. Illness I guess counts as a brush with death, so does crossing the street here. I don't seek these moments out either. In conclusion: bungee jumping, sky diving, car racing... you-know, things that regularly kill people... is not for me. 102.781 |
| Where is ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... HOME? Where do your cultural roots run the deepest? Where is your family’s ancestral home? Do you feel most connected to the place you grew up, where you live now, or somewhere else? Quick answer: 1. From family: Sweden. From where I grew up: Germany and Ireland. From being American: England. 2. Ancestors came from Småland (Sweden), Alsace (along the Rhine), a rootlet to Kerry (Ireland), England (Probably Midlands). But DNA also was Slavic, Italo-Greek, Iberian, Finnic ... and practically no German/French. So... who knows. Folks got around. 3. Grew up in the Rust Belt. Went to school and lived in the Plains, now live between mountains in the NW of USA. 4. Feel connected to Norway and Portugal. Love Taiwan and Serbia/Kosovo and Japan. That was the quick answer... my thoughts... I was self-raised with some Japanese concepts. It was interesting being there and understanding but not knowing how to explain it to Americans. I did like Japan, but living there isn't so easy. Like North Carolina, a Yankee is someone who visits, a damn Yankee is someone who refuses to leave. My Swedish roots are part of the melange of growing up. It wasn't that we were "Swedish" but small attitudes were definitely handed down. Like: we'll frown at you for 5 years but if we can't scare you off you're one of us. I've visited Sweden and could live in Göteborg but prolly not where my family came from. They left for a reason! There's still nothing there. The German influenced my speech. I supposedly have a Wisconsin accent. Go figure, I've never spent a night there. And although I'm disorganized I like to have some organization around me... sometimes. German travelers were ab-fab wonderful. Germans in German? Not. And I'm allergic to the German-American superiority complex. Irish must've affected my ears. I can understand the Irish better than the English. I understand some aspects of the musical culture and story-telling and... well, I have more English heritage but it was too bland or too puritanical. No fun. My English friends though gave me the very best vacation of my life in 2011. In the USA I'm drawn back to the plains. The mountains here are lovely but I feel closed in; I want an open horizon. And I found the people of Kansas/Nebraska/Oklahoma to be warmer. I won't go back to where I grew up although I do think the region was lovely. I just don't feel safe there. Increasingly I don't feel safe here. So where would I go? Outside of the USA I found Norway and Taiwan to be emotionally safe. Taiwanese are friendly. Norwegians are pleasant but closed. Kosovars and Serbians are warm and passionate. And it's cheap there. Costa Rica? I've lived there twice and the culture of lies and bureaucratic disorganization drives me nuts. Which leaves me in Portugal. I'd move there for a few months if they'd let me. Madonna lives there but she bought her residency. I don't have money. Still, visiting and living in a place isn't the same thing. Would I feel safe (yes)? Would I be connected (eu só posso falar um pouco de português)? Could I afford it (maybe)? Could I afford to travel from there (Oslo would be better). Is it tolerant? Yes. Is it multi-cultural? To an extent. I know this has been a long answer, but it's not an easy question for me. My world isn't black/white; it's rainbow colored. But go home? NO. Stay? Maybe. Move back to Kansas? In my dreams. Go live in Europe? That would be very very nice.  Flash fiction:
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| Legends ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... and curses In your entry today, write about superstitions, legends, and curses. Are there any legends in your culture that you take to heart? Are you superstitious? Do you believe in Pele’s Curse? No! I'm not superstitious. I'm careful about retribution though. The Sicilian evil-eye might not kill you but a stiletto in the back most assuredly will. I grew up around Germans, Irish, Polish, Italians, Sicilians. They all had myths and legends and stories and attitudes... Yeah, attitudes. I suspect many of the stories were to keep children in place and tell lies about anyone who was different than them. I don't remember anything within my family though. We weren't musical nor were we story tellers. We did discuss politics (my parents were New Deal Democrats) and played cards (rummy, cribbage). We had 3 encyclopedias, the two daily newspapers and a few books. The lack of story telling has crippled my attempts to write flash fiction... really... I'm having trouble getting the hang of it. I can't just retell a story with my own personal twist if I can't even tell the original! The Irish and Sicilians may have been more fortunate with both myths and curses. The Germans? Just morality plays about what happens to naughty people (think Grimm's Tales). All of these cultures had taboos though. A long list of what you weren't suppose to do and with whom. But I wasn't raised with them. My upbringing was more "puritanical" and therefore no fun at all. The "don'ts" were just don'ts with little explanation. Tūtū Pele? I don't worry about her. I have visited volcanoes in Costa Rica and been in lands with earthquakes and volcanoes, so yes, I respect them. And if personifying helps people to respect then that's okay too. But personally, I don't think Tūtū Pele cares much about my opinion nor whether I take a rock or two. I've never been to the island of Hawai'i, only O'ahu. Tūtū Pele let me stay and go in peace. 102.757 |
| Out of ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... steam I've been writing a blog entry every day since March 23rd. I've run out of steam. Hope to make it until the end of June. I've written about 43 flash fiction as well. By the end of June that should be 50. But, I'm not being read. Even at facebook. Today I begged there... and got some response. I hate to beg. This is how the depression creeps in. That "imposter syndrome" of "will I ever do enough, be good enough" and the depression of "why bother". I think I just expect too much. It's not for lack of trying. I reach out in so many ways to so many people in various aspects of my life. I just don't get as much back as I need some days. I long for the 80s and 90s when I was actually accomplishing something and dealing with people face-to-face. Maybe that's the problem. I don't have much family, but even with them I'm the one making contact. As for friends... I no longer trust people so I don't hang out with people like I should. And the internet isn't nourishing. I suspect that I'm actually doing fine in many ways. If only I felt that way! 102.747 |
| Snow in ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... Summer Not here... but close. Bozeman and Georgetown Lake had snow so I wove that into my daily flash fiction. The prompt was broad and easy but I was desperate. Only started to write it at 8, an hour before it was due at 9. It didn't win... so I still don't know what I'm doing right or wrong. I will persist.
When I finished I looked out the window. It was sunny and sprinkling so there was a brilliant rainbow. Our resident leprechaun got a photo of himself with it. It did get up to 58ºf (14ºc), very close to setting a record new low high. Summer can be tricky in Montana. There's a helluva storm churning in Eastern Montana. Looks like a cyclone. North of here there has been hail. It affected Lavender Lori who grows... I didn't mind the cooling down so much because I live on the third floor with poor air circulation (only two south facing windows). Central Europe this week is looking forward to life-threatening heat with temperatures over 40º predicted. It does get over 40º here, but the humidity is zilch (like 10%) when it does and nights cool down. I wish I weren't here, but I'm glad I'm not there either. Still no travel plans. |
| Secret ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... Love 30DBC: What is your secret love that most people don’t know about? Don’t reveal anything you wish you really keep secret, and please, don’t say it’s writing. Step out a little here. It can be anything, anything at all. For example, I love the weather, no matter if it’s raining, snowing, windy, hot, cold, whatever, that day. Long story that I won’t explain here, but I love the weather. Once I had a secret love: But I think I've written about this before and even though I want to write about it again... I won't tonight. Some things need to be shared when I'm in the right/write mood. Tonight... Yes, I love the weather. Sometimes it's boring in Missoula. Hate Winter Inversion and Smoke Season. But... cloud formations are amazing here and watching the sun set from the Higgins Street bridge can be breathtaking. Still, I must say that Oklahoma and Kansas have real REAL weather. Yes, I love chocolate... but who doesn't and in my case it's no secret. Just hide the M&Ms... And I love garlic too... just not with chocolate. Unless... it's mole sauce. Preferably mole poblano served in Puebla, México. I like herring and cardamom? Nah... no secret there either. Same with mushy peas. I figure if I tell you and you don't like it... more for me. I love Norway, Portugal, Taiwan? Everybody I know knows that. I really want to tell you about my secret love. I was 14... but we didn't speak about it until I was... 102,723 |
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