Reflections @ 51
Here I am sitting in the back room of my modest 1800 square foot (that includes the screened-in porch) home with my two beagles, “beagle bookends,” I affectionately call them. I notice how quiet the air is, cool with some dryness autumn evolves, seeping through the ambience of my otherwise cozy and comfy ranch house. I find the stillness of this mid-afternoon not because any kids of mine are still in school, or I opted to take a mental health day or even a sick one from work. I don’t [...]
Are we home?
What is home? Is home necessarily a physical place? Is home a state of being? Does it have emotions? Is it linear or does it witness change? Does home move like a river, characterized by its ebb and flow? Is it ever elusive? When we think of the answer to a commonly asked question, “So, where’s home?” we automatically spout where we live, a street name, a neighborhood name, perhaps. Where we reside now may not necessarily be our home. Home could be where you were born, established roots, even [...]
Best Blue I’ve ever seen
Is it a watercolor, or an oil? The color, even, deep, everywhere. It makes you pick your head up, hold it high and turn round and round filling your self with the best blue you’ve ever seen. It is an optical illusion It can be seen for miles in the open air. If you stare at it, you can’t tell if it’s close enough to touch your nose, or if it is so far away, you strain to see just where it ends. Wait. Paper- thin dark lines scratch the [...]
The Bathroom
The Carlisle house. The upstairs bathroom, the kid’s bathroom, was at the top of the stairs and in the middle of the hall. A bathtub with showering capabilities and a toilet were provided on the opposite side of the double sinks and counter. I experienced life’s measurements in the bathroom. The muddy blue double sinks were separated by a light tan Formica counter. During my pixie-haircut days as a preschooler, Mom would plop me on that counter in the middle of the two sinks, while Ann, my older half-sister, would [...]
Remembering Summer
As the hours of daylight slowly lessen and the heat of sun directly overhead shifts to a dim lower angle, I acknowledge the evolving seasons as summer evolves into fall. As a schoolkid on summer vacation, time was my companion and I used it to live in those moments. My summer memories on Carlisle were made outdoors where I had my own patch of dirt in the back corner of the backyard. The patch was once in bad shape, full of rocky lumps and hard clay. I tried my best [...]
Writing as Spiritual Practice
I heard the call. It wasn’t a whisper or a delicate voice or loud words urging me to transcribe thoughts to paper where I hoped to see ideas born into stories. The call went off like an alarm, telling me it was time to awaken my spirit. I received my calling when I was fifteen, accompanied by a pink hardcover book containing blank lined pages . . . and a latch glued to the back of the book that fit snugly into a lock glued to the top. I never [...]
In the beginning
My tree attraction wasn’t for just any tree. It was a particular birch tree I had grown to know in my early years – developing a kinship with its youth – planted on the same plot as I. Its delicate arms played in uncomplicated innocence, inviting me to circle around it. The poet Robert Frost wrote, “Birches” where, “I like to think some boy’s been swinging them . . . And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed, So low for long, they never right themselves: You [...]
Gone “unliked”
It has been a little disconcerting to learn my "like" button went unused for my previous post. It's the first post I've written since I started blogging where I didn't get at least 1 "like." What was wrong with it, I wonder. I re-read it and quite frankly, I didn't like it either. Why? I looked back to those posts where I got favorable responses and compared those to the previous unliked one. What did those likeable ones have that this one didn't? I've been trying a new gig - mixing some [...]