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 |   All that remains: here in my afterlife as a 'mainstream' blogger, with what little I know. |
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The Idiotic Ideate?? Formerly: New Zenith To Hell…(all started with arc as writer here from the trials of Rising Stars to Preferred Author to WDC Quills Best Poetry Collection to the falling action I feel now that settles in a white case.) Got to hustle to preserve the best of me before fully fading on that virtual horizon glowing more brilliant with each passing day to permanent nuclear winter. if people don’t get it, I don’t need to explain it. We kill all that’s beautiful before we question it’s purpose. So many people find it easier to think in the black and the white. God forbid you get lost straying in the gray. "Whoever fights monsters should see to it…he does not become a monster.” I’ve been to the abyss and back. Not so bad. The loneliest happy person you'd ever meet, when not the saddest person who needs to be alone. In an ever-changing world, we need to handle topics at the ready. If you roll over and give in to the narrative without lending a voice of your own, you might as well hand over your civil liberties. We have voices that should connect to true conscience and spirit for honest and open discourse. Why feel so redacted? Unify on issues and put drama aside. Open minds require complete objectivity. If none need apply, question the unbendable sources for answer. If you knee-jerk react to every issue lurking out there that clutches your neck, you fall victim to your own ignorance born from a life of apathy (no doubt) in pathetic cries of injustice. Just writing what I feel without the narrative-altering mind f---ing with my head. [MY Chorus] In your house, I long to be Room by room, patiently I'll wait for you there, like a stone I'll wait for you there, alone "It amazed me how truth was often suffocated in minutes, but lies were given sufficient air to breathe indefinitely." "You are all better than you think you are, you are just designed not to believe it when you hear it from yourself." ![Merit Badge in Second Time Around Contest
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Congratulations on winning the Grand Overall Prize in [Link To Item #2164876] with your beautiful poem, [Link to Book Entry #933358]. This poem really moved me. Great writing!
Rachel *^*Heartv*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Second_Time_Around_Contest-2164963_14.gif)    "...lasting art is never anything more than a mathematical expression of the relations that exist between the internal and the external, the self [le moi] and the world." -Jean Metzinger I'm in love with carefully chosen words, arranged just so, audible, edible, to inhale. I attempt to post new poems and epiphanies daily with some links to what inspires. I am legally blind with a rare, genetic form of glaucoma. I'm described as "end stage" after two successful surgeries, still subject to further vision loss. Cataracts complicating matters. Writing Can get strenuous but seldom deters what yearns to emerge, despite a documented history of depression and recently diagnosed ADHD and undefinable social disorders and/or PTSD. My recent poetry:
Sometimes epiphanies about my insights on writing and life and what goes on... Making sense of life is maddening. Why do I need to know, when truth may not actually exist? Learning to accept would be a better pursuit? Flailing about in my own mediocrity, hoping to bust out. I am visible. You can put a face with a name. I would like to see other writers, too. Fiction is what you write, not who you are. Reinventing myself. I couldn't continue on the path I was on and needed a fresh start. This time around I want to put the focus on writing and the world outside of this community as it affects my life. I realize now that I have been baring my chest a bit more, as when young. fake me much more boring and unliberated than the real me. A world arriving as silent as that blossom in your garden that I told you about... |
Sometimes, we just need to be lifted up. We need to be reminded to keep a chin up. That there is greatness in all of us, something awe inspiring. I wrote the following awhile ago and kept it private for some time. I want to share again, because it is something positive. Not the usual fare found in my port and I wish I could play on a theme like this more often.
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Thanks to Ben Langhinrichs  another poem has been featured on Writing.com. This time "Be My Eyes"  [E] was in the latest Romance/Love newsletter, appropriately in time for Valentine's Day. The newsletter can be found here:http://www.writing.com/main/newsletters/action/archives/id/3549 It's nice to have the extra attention paid to this oldie that has been somewhat dormant in my "Adorned By WDC Members" folder.Also, a short story "Fishing With Dad" [E] was featured during the same week. This time, it was in the Spiritual newsletter. Lightning can strike twice, so careful while visiting this port!Thanks for the feature Sophy  :http://www.writing.com/main/newsletters/action/archives/id/3546 |
This is what I feel like right now...
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| Just for fun I'm linking this article... http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93359?fp=1 Seriously, though. Is anyone going to try to scientifically explain this? Isn't this like the time whales mysteriously started beacing themselves? These tentacled creatures are such an enigma. They might be the closest thing on this planet resembling aliens. I've always wondered, especially when you have UFOs rising out of the Pacific waters. Could they be related? It might mean creatures from our inner planet have been invading. Just a thought. Giant Squids! They're really not that big. I've seen some of the pictures of what people are picking up along the beaches. They top out at 60 pounds. But really, where are the legendary Kraken then? Where are the truly giant sea creatures? Will this prove they don't actually exist, if one of the hundreds that wash up on California shores doesn't surface? another link: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-giant-squid2-2010feb02,0,5841943.story |
| J.D. Salinger was an enigma. Catcher in the Rye was my first real introduction to literature I could grasp, becoming a spring board for my future as a writer. With his death, I wonder if he has any hidden jewels the family would dare share with the rest of the world. He only had the one novel. Some thought he couldn't follow or duplicate the success of Catcher. http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1957492,00.html?xid=rss-arts I will be forever in awe. |
| I caught a clip of this video on ESPN's Sports Nation and had to share. Christmas is definitely over when you send your Christmas tree into orbit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCjHV63MQ4w The tree doesn't get its send off until after the one minute mark of the clip.
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| I'm laying awake thinking I'm not going to sleep until I write these thoughts down.... Life teaches us to do more, to rise above restraint. But with failing eyesight, I mentally wrestle with this logic each day while I am forced to accept my limitations. I push myself to write, read or research and learn more each day. But, I strain to read text and get frustrated with comprehension. I'm running to hide in the shadows or fleeing to seek out the light, but I just can't take things as they come. I need crutches to carry me through. I look for my support and find that I have shunned everyone, too proud to ask for help, but hoping someone will offer a lifeline. And when they do, that I won't reject the offer of help again and again until I've chased everyone away. It's difficult to accept what glaucoma is doing to me, what I'm doing to me. I've got to get a grip on myself, but I can never hold on for very long. More later. 9/1/2008 |
| Narrator: And so, we come to the last chapter, in which Christopher Robin and Pooh come to the enchanted place and we say goodbye. Pooh: Goodbye? Oh, no, please, can't we go back to page one and do it all over again? Narrator: Sorry, Pooh, but all stories have an ending you know. Pooh: Oh, bother. Narrator: Yes, the time had come at last. Christopher Robin was going away to school. Nobody else in the forest knew exactly why or where he was going. All they knew was it had something to do with twice times, and how to make things called A-B-C's, and where a place called Brazil is. Christopher Robin: Pooh? Pooh: Huh? Christopher Robin: What do you like doing best in the world? Pooh: What I like best is me going to visit you and you saying, "How about a smackerel of honey?" Christopher Robin: I like that, too, but what I like best is just doing nothing. Pooh: How do you do just nothing? Christopher Robin: Well, it's when grownups ask, "What are you going to do?" and you say "Nothing." Then you go out and do it. Pooh: I like that; let's do it all the time! Christopher Robin: You know something, Pooh? I'm not going to do just nothing anymore. Pooh: You mean, never again? Christopher Robin: Well, not so much. Pooh, when I'm away just doing nothing, will you come up here sometimes? Pooh: You mean alone? Just me? Christopher Robin: Yes. And Pooh? Promise you won't forget me, ever? Pooh: Oh, I won't, Christopher, I promise! Christopher Robin: Not even when I'm a hundred? Pooh: How old shall I be then? Christopher Robin: Ninety-nine, silly old bear. Narrator: Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on top of the forest, a little bear will always be waiting. Epilogue excerpted from: Winnie The Pooh and Tigger Too! |
| Only 10 more pages and I'm done with this notebook. Handwritten dreams marginalized, ruled on blue-lined mead. Freshly honed pencil, scratch, write my epitaph before you dull, sending me out for a sharpener or a sleeker instrument of graphite. Not even half way down, the white stares back, blank. How long will the game play before I... Filling, between the lines. My mind moves in graphite sprawls, squalls from a barren mind, mined of matter less than pink, deep within the grey. Hefted utensil, heavier from growing disuse, lighter than the spilled ink, I think. What did I come here for? To write or babble or what? Deeper in the Ticonderoga jungles I hack and stomp, all the while looking back, as if I could see where I was going from whence I came. Monkeys in trees mock me, and I put them there! One page filled, moving on to number nine for more...filling between the lines.
The prolific spell will end soon. Just keep writing, stay elevated above the sucking, muddy plain/plane. Six pages to go? Lose count? It's better that way. Word counts and such are for editors and printers, not for you. A lull. Too much static all around, plagued by the upheaval, the swells, the inflammation. Not sedate, no sedatives anymore. Remember what your therapist said. You can ride this one out. We've run aground...again...just a sand bar in time. Wait for the tide to rise? How long is the wait? Or risk trying to manipulate this ship, shift it to lean back into the shallow water? What peril awaits then? Risk wearing out the crew, with no strength left to sail? Why not a motorized mechanacian of some sort? Everything I'm given is natural. I must trust the wind, the maps, these eyes...five pages to go.
Just finished editing this...
Recording Each Day: Whenever one journal is closed and tucked away, I pull out another. My reflective mood seems altered by the medium I choose: paper vs. computer, pencil vs. pen, or different sized or shape notebooks. Each seems to stimulate me differently. One might remind me of a grade school notebook, another loose leaf, college-lined binders hold memories of former literary determination, or the notes of the journalist at a press conference or meeting. I could be creative, reflective; angry, sad or happy. I don't try to interpret what each of these sounding boards does or means to me. My environment could as easily be a factor into my prolific endeavors. I am facilitated by these tools that record what I espouse. The documents that here have become, I can either choose to share or let fade into the oblivion. Nobody cares besides me what I truly feel or think. People might be interested, pry to read, but we always find a snag, a soft point when I drone them all away. And it's just me and my instruments recording each day until we find the right frequency. |
| Nuther one of those days for me. My two-year-old gets me out of bed at 6:30 after 4 and 1/2 hours of sleep...my fault for staying up late. I nearly sliced my pinky off with a cheese cutting tool making breakfast for the kids. I didn't get to make my own breakfast, but fortunately Maddie didn't finish hers. After I managed to get myself bandaged (with gauze and tape since all we had were Thomas The Tank Engine band-aids), I pack up the kids and my gear for the YMCA. First stop is the store for some band-aids. After I managed to get through the checkout with protests in stereo for not buying treats, I get everyone loaded back in the truck before realizing I left Maddie's diaper bag at home. But what point was there in getting it? I go all the way home to get her traveling bathroom kit, bandage myself again before I head off to visit the Y, and the staff in their 'Kids Korner' doesn't bother to change her stinky. What's worse, it was dried on. The Y's sitters didn't even bother to tell me and I didn't check before leaving, so we had to keep the windows down the whole ride home...'cept on the interstate. Yuck! I guess that's just a small part of the day...I stayed in most of the day. Humid as heck outside. Watered my garden twice. The rest of the time it was on the computer or wrestling with the kids and putting Maddie down for her nap after lunch...which is getting more difficult every day. "No. I don't need nap!" CRY...CRY...it's over after 5-10 minutes, usually. I've got it pretty easy, I imagine. But the interruptions from everything to can I have a snack to 'Maddie is eating my crayons!' can be daunting to the creative mind. Luckily, Alex is my look out for part of that time...if he isn't engrossed in some show on PBS. Then, I have to haul Maddie to the bathroom for a tweezer session to pull wads of stuff from her nose...or hose off all the washable markers on her hands, face, legs, dress and toys. I'm ready for school to start and it's still another month! The two of them really do get along well...most of the time. They manage to fight over THE ONE TOY...like we had only one toy in the whole darn house. I take it away and in under five minutes or less they are fighting over something else. I threatened to throw away all the toys. So, later the six-year-old threatens the two-year-old to hand it over or 'Daddy will throw it away.' He gets a time out for that tactic in hopes that won't become an issue again. Whew! That's sort of what the days are like. Still seems pretty easy. I can't have my cake and eat it too with the writing thing. I'm just biding my time until fall. We could get a sitter. My wife claims it's not in the budget. But really, we don't manage our money that well. We seem to be able to spend more than we take in each month and still manage to stay afloat. It's funny adding up all the expenditures, knowing on certain days when we felt we could splurge, we really shouldn't have. And we never consult the numbers to find out how much we actually are spending. Just feels right by taking a quick glance at a check book or an online statement. Anyway, the point is, I'm the sitter. I'm the stay-at-home Dad who doesn't have time for his craft because of a crazy wife who thinks I shouldn't take the kids out to the McDonald's play area once a week for a kids meal and sundaes....while she's fisting 20's from the hospital ATM machine and paying nearly 20% in fees for each transaction...silly woman. But she's got the big paying job and I'm the one at home twiddling my thumbs having a good old time raising the kids...while my writing suffers. I blame everything and everyone else for this...but really the honus is on me. If I want this writing career to restart, I have to take the bull by the horns. Haven't been up to it. Sometimes, I think I'm ready for a fight. But I can't launch, knowing all my fuel is wasted on lift off and I go nowhere from there. Got to think smart. Plan. Maybe, someday I'll return to former glory and beyond; I'm not going to publish a book of poetry and call it a career just yet. Brian |
| For A Limited Time... I'm unveiling and rolling out onto the showroom floor all works that have been in hiding. Time to give the public one last look before these models are liquidated...eliminated. Depending on reviews...or lack thereoff...I will systematically remove old works to make way for new. So, one last looky-loo for you and then they go bub-bye. I'm not really working on anything new. But, it's a lot of work to keep up with all this stuff. Don't like all these items in cobwebs, hiding in corners, or tucked away in closets and attics. My aim is for a tighter, neater port...so that I can eyeball my writings better. Just feels too unruly and need to keep it simple to reduce searches...and the headaches and associated eye strain. Brian |
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In the Falkland Islands, internet is very limited and very expensive. The place I'm currently staying only lets me use it in the middle of the night, so when I have to get up at 3 am to check my texts (no cell service to the US here unless I'm on the internet) or WdC, I don't do nearly as much as I used to. 
I currently have 2 very long emails I still need to get to from several days ago. Anyway, I miss everyone, but I also miss sleep, so there's that. 
Have you spoken to the doctor about your vision problems lately? I know there are special glasses for it because I have to wear them to read much ever since the brain injury. It's part of why I now only listen to audiobooks instead of reading regular books. It took 8 years for anyone to diagnose it because I have a brain injury and while one might think it would be obvious to me that I see double, it wasn't. Partly, my brain does a fair job of compensating. But also, partly, you use your brain to realize and understand that the 2 images you constantly see are double vision and something you should mention to your eye doctor. Since my brain was damaged, even basic things like that can escape me. 
I never once thought to mention it, even with annual eye exams in the Army and an exam every 2 years at the VA. Though, in my defense, since it happens in something like 41% of people with a brain injury, it should have been discovered by an eye doctor much sooner. 
I know doing that activity is a CRAP TON of work. But you made a difference in lives, not just his, but for all the people he's reviewed since. 
Well done! 
