Know New Now

When working yourself up to starting the new edit, you can look into the mirror and try the positive affirmation talk. You can do 30 push ups and sit ups and chest thumb yourself or chest bump your friends.  You can eat a pint of ice cream and wallow in the upcoming challenge for a moment. Or you can just continue on like Professor Binns, the Hogwarts Magical History professor.  After he died, he just kept right on going; never cease to chance a thought as to what you are attempting to accomplish.  Whichever and however you are, just don't stop.  It's a trap to stop.

Getting trapped can set you back weeks, days, hours, months.  Does it really matter how long?  Keep it in your heart and your mind.  If you have to take a physical breather, do so if you must.  But don't stop writing in your head.  

Within my mind is where I flesh a lot of my story out.  I know it's not the most efficient, but I've decided that if it's not important enough to remember (or write down the moment I think of it), well, then it is not meant to be and so must be left by the wayside for the scavengers to pillage.  

I only know that you keep going. You keep writing, you keep editing, you continue onward.  It will always be an uphill battle.  All the best things are.  And such battles are uphill all the way to the end, even past the final word.

That is what I tell myself because that is what I believe. I love my writing and I love the opportunity to write, but it is true, what Ernest Hemingway said, 'All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.'

Bleed, I must, or I am not giving enough of myself to my work.

And so I bleed.  And so I bleed.

Silver

One of my other favorite poets besides e.e. cummings is one that often overlooked because he was known to write poetry for children.  But what I've found is that this man understands more about the human condition than most of his more "notable and mature" colleagues.  I grew up on his poetry and books.  His wit, humor, and composition are all some of the best moments of my young reads.  I still find myself reciting a poem of his when the occasion calls for it, which is much more often than I've ever truly realized.

While I still have yet to purchase all of his collection, which is an intention of mine, most assuredly, I also am in love with the fact that one of my daughter's first choice books to read to me is my favorite of his, called The Giving Tree.

And now that I am older, I understand it that much more.  By the time I am very old, I'm sure I will understand it utterly.

And so I share my rendition of A Light in the Attic.  An homage to this brilliant author who will always top my list.

A Light In the Attic

There's a light in the attic
But no one seems to be home.
There's a light in the attic
but who says it's even turned on?
I'm sure it's not lit
Because I checked on it myself
Just a moment ago, so I'd know.
There's a light in the attic
And no one's home.
So no one come over
'Cuz I just want to be alone.


His much better rendition can be found below:

A LIGHT IN THE ATTIC 

There's a light on in the attic. 

Though the house is dark and shuttered, 

I can see a flickerin' flutter, 

And I know what it's about. 

There's a light on in the attic. 

I can see it from the outside, 

And I know you're on the inside . . . lookin' out. 

-Shel Silverstein

Earn It

When you finish the experience that a new story brings you, oftentimes you are left to ponder the consequences it has left upon you.  The consequences of how it weakened you, and the consequences of how it strengthened you.

I finished a wonderful story that begins and ends with the meaning and truth behind true sacrifice.  So many people believe that sacrifice is something negative.  It is something that you must give up and lose to get something you feel that you need.

They think that it is buying a stuffed bear to give to a crying child, or it is working a job you despise in order to put food on your table.  And not even that much food.

However, to truly understand what sacrifice is, you have to be willing to learn and to understand.  You have to have the desire to come to see things as they truly are and can be.  That sacrifice isn't giving up something to get something you feel you need.  It's not giving a child a toy to keep them from crying, it's giving them your stuffed bear to soothe them and see them smile and giggle and laugh.  It is working hard at a job to come home at the end of the day and enjoy the fruits of your labor with those that you hold most dear.

Sacrifice is giving up what you think you want for something so much more than you can imagine: what you truly need.  And understanding that no sacrifice is worth giving up those you love for anything.

It was truly an amazing story and it strengthened me, and it weakened me.  It strengthened my resolve to protect and love and care for my family.  It strengthened my resolve to work hard at my dream and never give up, no matter what.  To find a way no matter how difficult it may be, even if you keep having to get back up and start over again and again and again.

And it weakened me because I am human.  And I will be thrown down again and again no matter how hard I work to achieve something.  I will always get knocked down.  And the more important the matter is, the more I can expect resistance.  That is difficult to accept.  But if I keep getting up, I will never, never lose.  And sacrificing my right now, my small and meek endeavors, can turn into so much more.

Dreams are amazingly powerful things.  They are what created our homes, our cities, our entire world.  But a dream at the cost of that which is most important is a mere empty stupor.  It is cold and meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

I want my dream to mean something.  I want to learn from the sacrifices I made to earn it.

Waltzing Matilda

Thought I'd run out on you, huh? 'Tis I, back again, to haunt this blog forevermore. 

It is amazing, both the work and the joy one receives at seeing their child learn to read.  Oftentimes, I groan inwardly simply because well, she chooses the stories and sometimes they are the same book and I long to hear another.  Other times, I groan because she just doesn't want to exude any true effort and looks to me to sound out the words, acting as though she is inept.  This is when it truly gets upsetting.  She is so capable and she sells herself short (hmmm, I think I may know someone else who seems to do that).

And then there are those moments, when it is pure joy and bliss and everything wonderful you dreamed and more.  Those are the short suspended reality moments that you work for.  Though tonight I wanted to groan inwardly, I decided to take an opportunity and let her read the two books she chose, and then I pulled out one that I wanted to read to her.

Normally I would read to all my children but the toddler is more interested in discovering what else can make noises on this brick surface while the wonderful five year old took herself to bed (don't ask me, she does it all the time once she begins to feel sleepy). 

We actually started Matilda, written by Roald Dahl, a few nights ago, but tonight, I was able to sit down with her and read three more glorious chapters.  In that time, she decided that Matilda had a mean daddy and needed to get a new one.  All in due time, I thought to myself.  In any case, for an entire hour, my daughter and I wrapped ourselves up in the written word together and loved every syllable of it. 

Illustrator Quentin Blake's rendition of the main character, Matilda.

Matilda is one of my books in my reading goals for the year. Specifically, to read it to my children.  I never realized just how many memories it would bring to the surface of my mother reading to me.  Specifically this book.  This book instilled in me my love of reading, and taught me that there were entire worlds and characters and adventures out there in each and every book I picked up, should I choose to embark upon them. 

This event may not enrapture my daughter to suddenly become some avid bookworm.  Yet I hope it instills something that stirs her to love the written word and just how powerful it can be.  And how entirely wonderful it can be.

You see, I've found that I'm not in it so much for the power behind it, as for the wonder inside it.

Channelling e.e. cummings

amidst a world I've never shared, joy precedes

every moment, his gaze stills the air:

his tender touch is the song of my soul that he whispers,

what i long to bury beneath he somehow knows

his genteel touch disarms my very thoughts

though my walls are as a military's keep

he discards brick by brick every defense as time weathers

(expertly, amazingly, masterfully) away all mountains

and if his desire be to abandon the work, i and

my soul will whither, mere dust sifted into the wind, 

as though a storm descended upon my keep

to crumble and wash away its very existence;

nothing exists in such a world as this

beyond the quiet of such patient gentility: whose light

guides me with such a honeyed sheen,

that both today and tomorrow are revealed

(there is no answer to the question of what unearths 

or buries my soul; yet his touch knows 

the map to my keep and my walls)

his light is the only in our new eternity.

Writing Prompt #32 from Think Written's website: Rewrite a Poem.  Take any poem or short story you find anywhere.  Rewrite it in your own words.

I used the following poem expertly and beautifully written by e.e. cummings:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands