TangledWings

It's Thursday...and Thursday means Poetry

Click here to visit the traveling poetry show...the theme is utopia and although i didn't write anything for the theme i did write a little something...

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You sit on the steps of the back porch staring across the nothingness
that fills the space between you and the distant horizon.  In your head
you toss around all your faults, all your wrong doings, all the pain you
know you've caused, all the lies you know you've told.  I know your
thoughts because I know your eyes--brown, forgiving, distrusting,
hungry, lost, on the verge of some kind of holy freedom.  I would give
the world to love you but your eyes won't let me in.  I hold in my own
scarred hands so much I want to show you but your eyes always pull
within.  I would string a hundred words together and tie them around
your wrists if I thought they would help you see, would help you find
your way home, but your eyes never break from the invisible promise
you keep expecting to walk out of that broken place between the
earth and sky.  One day, when I've traveled as far as the roads of
this life will go and I finally reach the horizon that haunts your soul,
I will step from that broken place you've come to depend upon, dragging
my skirt of poems like the wild eyed creature I know we both long to
hold, letting each word brush against the hot earth and stir the dirt
behind me as I go and when you squint your eyes and catch a glimpse
of my silhouette coming like a storm, know I am bringing to you every
promise I have collected along the way, know they're held tightly
against my chest, know they hold no magic but the magic you breathe
into their lifeless forms and also know I am coming to read aloud
every story you hold inside until they've all been told and witnessed
by the stars, until we find the ending you've locked tightly in the
gentle darkness of your brown eyes.

I'm Over Here...

Yep, it's another one of those posts I'm not sure I want on my photography blog.  Click here.

A Food for the Soul Kind of Day

Do you ever need one of those mental health days.  You know, one of those days you skip out on work to do nothing other than things that make you feel alive and happy and satisfied?  Yeah, me too...

Yesterday I sent an e-mail to one of my very best friends/co-workers about a very interesting episode of Oprah that would be airing today (237 Reasons to Have Sex.)  I told her we were going to have to find someone to tivo it for us so we could watch it, learn from it, and maybe even take a few notes.  She suggested we forget having someone tivo it and the two of us just take the day off, spend time doing things we love and end our day watching Oprah.  At first I thought she was kidding.  Take off on such short notice?  What?  I've never done that before.  It wasn't until she sent me another e-mail letting me know she'd already put in her time-off request that I realized she wasn't kidding and that yes, we really were going to do this.  And we did.  And we loved it.  And we're seriously thinking we need to do something similar to this at least once a month.

Both of us were so excited about the prospect of a day together that neither one of us slept very long or very well last night.  We met for a leisurely morning spent on the patio of my favorite coffee shop--me drinking some kind of yummy jasmine tea, her drinking some kind of mocha something-or-another that was almost too pretty to drink.  After soaking in the cool morning air we explored a few shops we'd never visited before...finding several gorgeous articles of clothing we both want to purchase...some day.  Then there was fair food because well, as I mentioned yesterday the fair is here and it's only once a year so who can resist.  We worked our fair food off with more cutesy shop exploration.  Our day ended on my couch at 3:00 cst watching Oprah, a piece of key lime pie for each of us, laughing and talking about the issues the show brought up for us which I want to blog some more about once I've had a bit more time to think it all through.

It was wonderful.  It was perfect.  It was soul nourishing.  But you know, after a day like this one who wants to go back to work...ever...

Would you like to join us next month?...

Monday Mosaic--the County Fair edition

It always seems like a good idea at the time...the county fair that is.  I love the idea of eating greasy, calorie laden, heart attack causing, sinfully delicious fair food.  I love the idea of making memories with the ones I love.  I love the idea of a photo ops around every corner, surrounding you at every turn.  But it also always seems like we start arguing the minute we pull into the parking lot.  I get mad at T because he's a little bit too frugal for his own good.  T gets made at me for not being frugal enough.  And we both get mad at the B-Dog because he starts whining a mere 10 minutes after our arrival..."It's too hot.  I can't walk anymore.  Somebody needs to carry me.  I just can't make it any further."  Add to that the exorbitant cost of everything which leaves you feeling more than a little bit ripped off...and even more whining ("I need an ice cream.  Somebody please buy me an ice cream."--but who in god's name wants to pay 3 bucks for a simple soft serve cone you can get at McDonald's for under a dollar?), and well you have a pretty emotionally loaded afternoon.  I think at one point I completely lost it when the B-Dog, begging to be carried by someone, anyone, sat down on the pavement and refused to move and I promised him that if he didn't get up he would never eat ice cream again as long as he lived under my roof.  And I think I'm also guilty of swearing that next year when the county fair rolls around again I was leaving both of them at home and going by myself.  But then you get home and later in the day start recalling the moments when you weren't at each others throats and you actually did enjoy yourselves...and almost didn't mind paying an outrageous amount of money just to play a game in which you throw one single measley dart and a wall full of small, somewhat flaccid balloons.  And yes, even though you feel completely sick to your stomach because you haven't inhaled that much grease in one setting in a very, very long time...and your also a little sick at the thought of spending the equivalent of a week's worth of groceries in one afternoon, an afternoon in which you have absolutely nothing to show for it except slightly tighter jeans, you know that next year at this very same time you'll being doing the exact same thing--stuffing your face while arguing with your family members.  Maybe we have a short memory span.  Maybe we're gluttons for punishment.  Maybe we're hopeless romantics who swear this year will be different.  Whatever it is, it keeps us going back year after year after year.    

Monday Mosaic

by the way...I posted over here yesterday...

A Quick One Before the Weekend

Highlights of my week:

• My mom is coming into town from Dallas (where they moved a few weeks ago) and she's staying the night with me tonight and tomorrow.  Tonight is ladies night (everyone's coming over for food and games) and tomorrow night is movie night.
• Watching Broken English (two times in a row).  One of you recommended it to me and I'm so grateful.  It was really, really good.
• Steal of the week--one of our Hastings is going out of business and everything is on sale.  The books are currently 60% off and I just so happened to find a copy of Keri Smith's new book Wreck this Journal.  I got it for 6 bucks!  Can you believe that!!
• Eating Sri Lankan food for the very first time.  The girlfriend of a friend of ours is from Sri Lanka and she cooked some of her favorites for us.  Delicious!
• Finally, finally, finally catching the mouse that has been terrorizing me for a week and a half.  And when I say terrorizing I'm not exaggerating.  One Sunday morning T woke up just in time to see the mouse crawl out from underneath our blanket, up his leg, across his chest and then it just sat there on his shoulder.  Another night I woke to the sound of it scurrying across our bed...right by my head.  I haven't slept a full night in days because I've been too worried about it crawling on me in my sleep.  One night I was so wired...and exhausted...that I finally gathered a bunch of pillows and a blanket and made a bed in the bathtub.  Sure it can still find me in the tub but it's less likely to walk around on me if I'm in the tub than if I'm in our bed.  Oh, and I found several droppings in the B-Dog's bed too which probably means it had been crawling around on him in his sleep too.  NASTY!
• A good friend of ours was a contestant on this past Monday's episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.  Pretty cool! 
• Things at work seem to finally be slowing down...at least a little bit.
• T's been out of town all week and although I've missed him I've enjoyed having some alone time with the B-Dog.
• Talking with Kim on the phone tonight for the very first time.  It's always really cool to finally talk with/meet a blogging friend.  And it's like you've known each other forever...you seem to fall into conversation so easily.
• My deposit for ArtFest cleared the bank this week so I guess that means I'm in.

I've Been Hungry for Words Lately...

What you can't hear in the hushed
silence of my better days is
the moaning of the stars as they
prepare for night, their five-pointed
hands reaching into the black
for dreams, for memories, for the door
my soul tries to close before my eyes have
a chance to glance into the room beyond
for that face I remember, so young,
now so changed, that has always seemed
to belong to me, whether or not it ever
gave me a second thought, whether
or not it ever remembered my name,
whether or not it realized I had made
plans.

SPC {Bathrooms-1}

One of my favorite things to do on a Saturday afternoon is slip out of the house while the B-Dog is napping, head to my favorite coffee shop, enjoy an ice tea, and write...or sometimes just stare into space.  If my brain is too muddled and I can't find words, or if I need some kind of prompt to get myself started I sit quietly for a few minutes observing my surroundings and then I'll create some kind of short poem out of three or four of my observations all strung together with my own thoughts, emotions, and symbolism tying it all together.

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A Saturday Afternoon at my Favorite Coffee Shop...

Nothing goes better with Dean Martin than
worn paint on the legs of a wooden chair
being drug across the bare floor, screeching
it's longing to be a little closer to a daydream
that often gets lost in the glare of the sun on
the window panes.  Somewhere in the breaths
lost in the coffee air is a secret and a prayer that
that if found, and if answered, would peel away
my skin and release the sparrows I've been
holding captive in the dark.

Sunday Scribblings {Writting}

...We have lived; our moments are important.  This is what it is to be a writer: to be the carrier of details that make up history, to care about the orange booths in the coffee shop in Owatomma.  Recording the details of our lives is a stance against bombs with their mass ability to kill, against too much speed and efficienty.  A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp's half-and-half, the ketchup on the cournter...Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist...

from Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Today I want to find a poem in the little pieces of life.  I want to find a poem in the gentleman who, when I smiled at him, looked passed me as if I were the wind.  I want to find a poem in the way the avocado's seed dropped from my hand, rolled beneath the table, and disappeared.  I want to find a poem in the searching of faces for the things I have yet to learn.  I want to find a poem in color and light and the way the clouds hang lazily over the sun.  I want to find a poem in our frustrations, in our mistakes, in the way we push through our day day to get to something we can't find.  I want to find a poem in noise and movement and questions and the things we try to hide from the world.  I want to find a poem in the phone I keep expecting to ring although it never does, in yesterday's dirty dishes, and all the bad haircuts in the future.  I want to find a poem in folding laundry, making my son's lunch, rearranging the pantry, and all of life's other mundane duties.  I want to find a poem in scraps and leftovers and scars and broken pieces because surely everything, especially the small unnoticed things, holds a poem in the beauty of it's everyday-ness.  I want to find a poem in the soft corner of my heart, that place that cries out to always have the ability to find poetry in all of life, that place that wants to see possiblity and cligns to the small windows of vision in a blurry, spinning universe. 

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

Do you ever feel like the images you're drawn to, the ones you keep find yourself creating, the ones that catch your eye and pull at your heart, whisper softly...and sometimes scream loudly...about the way you're feeling about life?