biting, tearing, ripping grinding,
chewing, gnashing, gnawing, mutilating,
mastication, swallowing,
traveling, sloshing, processing,
it all comes out in the end.

Image Courtesy of Phtotobucket

phosphorescent fingernails
dipped in
twelve year old scotch
glow in a black lit room,

trace rivers
of gold liquid.
wet lines on
translucent skin

she remembers

pigtails and
grape juice
and being pushed
       on a swing

Today has been sad and somber filled. There is a sadness hanging in the air, thick as the humidity of a mid-August day in the south.
A dear friend has begun another part of her journey as she passed this morning from her earthly life.
A childhood friend of my wife, she has been battling leukemia for the better part of three years spending the past several weeks in a coma.
Words are difficult to come by at this time. All that can be offered from our hearts are prayers and thoughts of love and caring for her family.
Forty-seven is too young to leave this world and we offer sympathy, prayers, and many words unspoken to a father, a mother, a brother, and especially, a twin sister.
Linda, you are and will be sorely missed by all whose lives you touched with your smiles and easy laughter…

On the Death of a Twin Wm. Strode

Where are yee now, Astrologers, that looke
For petty accidents in Heavens booke?
Two Twins, to whom one Influence gave breath,
Differ in more than Fortune, Life and Death.
While both were warme (for that was all they were
Unlesse some feeble cry sayd Life was there
By wavering change of health they seem’d to trie
Which of the two should live, for one must die.
As if one Soule, allotted to susteine
The lumpe, which afterwards was cutt in twain,
Now servde them both: whose limited restraynt
From double vertue made them both to faynt:
But when that common Soule away should flie,
Death killing one, expected both should die:
Shee hitt, and was deceivde: that other parte
Went to supply the weake survivers heart:
So Death, where shee was cruell, seemde most milde:
She aymed at two, and killde but halfe a childe.

Why write? Why attempt to put words on a page? What is it that drives a person to such a task that feels so isolating? What right do I have to write?

That’s is what is being addressed over at High Calling Blogs currently. A new book club has begun. A few of the High Calling Bloggers (you can see a partial list below) are blogging their way through Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write.

For today’s post I am, for me taking a risk. I am posting the random writing that came out of reading through Cameron’s first chapter titled “Begin”. I set a goal of 500 words with not particular thought in mind. I wanted to put down on paper what was happening around me and within me. Thanks in advance for reading.

Here I sit in semi-darkness. Seven a.m. Thunder rolling across the sky above, rattling windows as the Chickadees, finches, tufted-titmice, song sparrows and the various other feathered friends that visit our yard each calling out their spring calls – some already going from feeder to nest to nourish the babies; others calling out, dancing, following instinctual mating rituals.

A pair of cardinals sits precariously on the feeder as the winds of the storm rock them back and forth. The male picks seed and feeds it to his mate who patiently sits next to him waiting for nourishment to be given to her.

I am writing with such randomness that someday when reread will offer, hopefully, a gem, a nugget, a spark of a word or phrase that will lead into something that sounds more coherent than the rambling I am putting down on paper right now.

Son is up. The storm woke him up an hour earlier than he should be…thankfully Daughter can sleep through most anything and is in blissful four year old dreamland right now.

Son has decided that is it is time to make “breakfast” as only he can using all the materials that are available in the playroom kitchen.

It actually does amaze me that I am able to sit here and put words down while he banters, in a voice that’s too loud, about what he is cooking for me, mom, and sister.

He is a breath of joy in my life. He is a child who seems to know none of our hurts, fears, concerns. He doesn’t worry whether you like him or not. He has a joy to life that so many in our world need.

I believe more and more each day that this beautiful fifteen year old, green-eyed, towheaded, boy is not the one with special needs. It is the rest of the world with the special needs. It is the rest of us who have lost that childlike joy that Son still retains. It is the rest of us who can’t see beyond the cover, the stereotypes, the expectations we pile on each other. It is we, I believe, who are handicapped.

He has no such expectations.

Cameron says to just start at the beginning. Write where you are. Write what you are.

I am not a Billy Collins or a Dickinson, or an Ignatow, or a Frost, Whitman, Eliot, Hopkins, or Williams (or even a Young, Barkat, Coffey. Richards, Goodyear, or Moon). I am me. I can only write about what I see. There is no one else around who views the world in the same way as I.

So I begin. I write. I fill the page with a hope and a dream.

Please visit the following bloggers and enjoy their contributions to this endeavor (if you are participating please leave your link in the comments section and I will add you to the list):

Glynn’s The Right to Write: Beginnings

LL’s Let Yourself Write

Lyla’s The Art of Taking Dictation

Monica’s Book Club: The Right to Write

Louise’s An Automatic Response

Nancy’s Let’s Write

nancy’s ready…set

Marilyn’s Book Club

Erin’s Just Writing

Cassandra’s In the Quiet

Darlene’s How God Expects Us to Run

God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.
As roses up from the ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.
It hides within these,
till one day it cracks them open.

-Rumi

It is hidden behind
the bright green eyes,
under unmanageable blond hair,
of one who the world says
is odd,
is different,
is slow.

But it is this boy
who lives his life
broken open each
day
with the joy
that we search for
but rarely see from
amid the busyness
of the world.

Where do you find the hidden joy of God?

And here are my favorite “snow angels” (very busy in the snow):

Mommy and Daughter hard at work:

The end result (notice the “zombie killing hat” @mgoodyear )

This is the life you’ve been given.
Well…it fits too tight
Like those jeans of yours
You know

The ones in the
Back of the closet

The ones you last wore
When you were seventeen
going on thirty.

The ones you tried on
Last week
When you felt that desire to
Make an exchange,
To return what you have
To relive those high school and
College days
That weren’t so good
To begin with.

Life has moved you on,
Has given to you
Its no returns,
No exchange policy
In the form of

A spouse,
A child
(Maybe two),
A home,
A faith
more mature
Than what you once had

Even so
You look during
Dark, quiet evenings
At the
“What could have beens”
And the
“If onlys”
And you tell the shadows
Of the past that you would like
To make an exchange

But not really.