My best friend John was talking to me today about a man he works with named Mike. Last night Mike didn’t show up for work; apparently he just found out he has cancer.
Mike is 32 years old, just got married, his wife just had a baby and they just bought a house. The cancer spread from his testicles and is now in his stomach. Nine weeks of chemo await him.
Yesterday, I took a picture of a tree.
I feel lucky to have what I believe is a bunch of open-minded people following my blog. So I ask you, please try to see the connection.
In life, there is so much beauty. While I’m sure Mike is worried as hell for himself and his new family, and it might be impossible at the moment for him to see what he has gained in light of what he has potentially lost, this is what I would advise him, if I knew him: focus on the beauty in every single day.
It’s so much easier for we who are not suffering to see the positive in things. The very last thing I mean to do is be glib. But each and every one of us is dying. Every thing that lives, will die. This is what connects us.
Please, send some positive thoughts out for Mike, and for all who suffer. And don’t forget to look for beauty, everywhere you go.
I have a request for my fellow bloggers. Please go into your reader, and click on the edit button for “Blogs I Follow.” (It’s at the top right corner of the page.) Then report back here and tell me if you follow the same number of blogs I do. According to mine, it’s 1.
Yes, one.
That’s wrong, by the way.
I’d like to see if it’s just me WordPress likes to mess with.
You know that feeling you get when you’re reading a book that’s so good–you’re enjoying the world and love the characters so much–that you don’t want it to end? You approach the last few chapters and you’re divided – do you hurry up and read it because it’s so exciting? Or do you savour it slowly like a fine glass of Chardonnay? It’s a dilemma I think we all deal with at least once or, if we’re lucky, many times.
I’m currently reading a book like that. The book is catskinner’s book by Misha Burnett. If you’re not already following his blog and/or haven’t started reading his novels, you should. You can find them here: http://www.amazon.com/Misha-Burnett/e/B008MQ8W4K I’ll be writing a review as soon as I’m finished.
But this is only half the reason for this post.
When I finished writing my novel, The Great Dagmaru, I was miserable. Like that feeling when I’ve finished reading a novel I enjoyed, times ten. It was like my children had left home and didn’t need me anymore. I walked around with a dark cloud over my head for a week. It was so dark, in fact, I think I heard thunder. I wonder if this is part of the reason it’s taking me so long to edit it… I don’t want it to end.
So in my own insane way of undertaking more than I can really handle, I’m seriously entertaining the notion of beginning the sequel. I was going to write one anyway; I wasn’t going to start it until NaNoWriMo in November. In some convoluted way, maybe adding more to my workload will increase my productivity.
I need a way to get past this psychological block, however I do it.
Do you have a book you never wanted to put down? Recommend it in the comments. And don’t forget to check out Misha’s blog and his novels!
You never know when you’re going to meet someone who will change your life forever. Be it by accident or by design, there are those whose actions will alter the course of our lives, or do it simply by existing.
For myself, I think the people who have changed my life the most drastically are my kids. I could have had no idea how much until I actually gave birth to them.
There are people who have passed through my life who have caused me to trust less, and those who have cemented my faith in humanity. I suppose one sort balances the other sort out.
My ex, with whom I had my children…
We met when we worked together many years before we actually began having a romantic relationship. We lost track of each other for six years – it didn’t really matter. We were barely friends at the start. Then one day I pulled into a gas station just to buy gas and there he was again, in a city hundreds of miles from where we first met. Some might say it was meant to be. I’m sure my kids would.
I never even liked children before I had my own. Yet now I would die for one, even if it was not mine. That’s what being a mother is about, I guess.
It’s that time of the week again! Time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! I’m excited – are you? Of course, you are going to join in this week, right? I’m not sure what inspired my prompt this week. Perhaps it’s Mother’s Day which is coming up on Sunday. Here it is:
This week your Prompt will be ‘entrance.’ As a noun or verb, literally or loosely, you choose how to write your post around the concept.
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at the prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post.
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people will come and read your post! The way to ping back, is to just copy and paste the URL of my post somewhere on your post. Then your URL will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. For example, in your post you can copy and paste the following: This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-1014/ The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
I wonder, sometimes, at the perfection of nature. How effortlessly it creates and destroys – how without discrimination it can ruin our lives. Yet who of us can say that we belong here?
As I walk, I see what nature has made. A flower lives and dies, just like that. We build things and they disintegrate in the elements before our eyes. We are persistent, we humans. Aren’t we? Coming up with better ways to protect our properties, but in the end it’s always nature that takes it from us. Is it any wonder that our own nature is to destroy things?
There is no material we can create that will not be foiled by nature… for if anything lasts beyond our existence on earth, nature will eventually destroy it, even if it takes the complete annihilation of the planet to do so.
What can we create that nature will not destroy? Where does our purity lie?
The answer must be in the things that we, like nature, create without effort. For some of us it’s music, or thoughts or words – ideas. If our nature is to create that which is beautiful, it is also ephemeral, as a flower.
We are born and we die. Like animals we have the innate will to survive; to perpetuate our species. We belong here every bit as much and as little as a flower. We are no better, and no worse. For even a weed can destroy concrete.
I can’t help but believe there is a great lesson to be learned from nature. The more effortlessly we live–the more we do what our true nature compels us to do–the more content we can be.
The good news is, I’m getting some editing done. I’m allowing my imagination to wander and I’m picking up on my character’s vibes; getting their words from their mouths to the page, as well as their actions and their thoughts. Spending some serious concentration on my novel is something I’ve been trying to do for a while, though it’s not likely to last into the weekend. Unfortunately, my ex crapped out on me yet again, so I have the kids. Again.
The bad news is, it seems that all I’ve been able to do for the last couple of days is be creative. So while my right brain takes the lead I haven’t been able to come up with anything to write about on my blog. I’m all kinds of imagination and no real life. It’s a good way to be – I think so anyway.
Still, in a way it’s frustrating. When I’m “in” my novel, I walk around the block on my paper route and I see nothing around me. The absence of photos these past few days (is it weeks already?) is proof. I go into this trance-like state, sometimes even walking right past the houses I’ve been delivering to for two and a half years now, and having to back-track. My family has to say things to me three times before I understand the words. Which is interesting to me, because according to the research I just did, the left brain (that I’m not using very much of these days) is responsible for words, among other things.
I suppose I should be pleased about this. In my experience it’s hard to get to the point I’m at right now, able to use my creative side. When I’m pulled out of it usually, by having someone interrupt me when I’m trying to write, I get so annoyed that it takes me hours to go back, if I can at all.
It must, however, be extremely inconvenient for anyone who tries to interact with me when I’m like this. Wouldn’t you hate living with a writer? I would.
I must check to see if I start off with my left foot to go up and down stairs when I’m right-brained…
In attempting to come up with something new to write here today, I realized there doesn’t seem to be much left of my present life that I haven’t already written about. In short, I’m running out of things to say.
I have this vision in my head of me and you sitting in a restaurant, eating a meal and looking around at the other couples – the young ones holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes, *gag* and the middle aged ones with kids, arguing over whether Bobby should get a new computer for his fourth birthday – and having nothing to say to one another. We’ve already talked about the weather and how bad the traffic was to get here.
Your teeth hitting the spoon every time you sip your soup is getting on my nerves.
Your memories of how sexy I was when we first met are fading even as the colour in your favourite cardigan does every time I wash it – it’s a horrible burnt orange and I’ve been secretly putting a drop of bleach in the water for about six months. I figure if it finally goes yellow you’ll stop wearing it.
Is that how things are going to end up with us, WordPress? Is it?
Come on, my dear. Let’s spice that plate of bits and bytes up, shall we? Before I have to face your dentures in a pot beside the sink in the bathroom every night.
So Alex and I were rolling pennies this morning and I was starting to realize I keep too much. Not only change, which sits on tables, in jars, and in the case of what we were rolling, a four litre juice container (it was heavy), but all the ‘stuff’ I’ve accumulated over the years.
I’m also trying to sell my mother’s condo, which is full of ‘stuff.’ Three bedrooms worth and not really enough room to sort it, so there are boxes on their way, courtesy of my dear friend John and his pick up truck, that will go into my basement to be emptied and sorted. Then I’ll have a garage sale to get rid of said stuff…
…which will probably land me a bunch more change to roll. Does it ever end?
It’s the first Friday in May. Imagine that! Depending where you are in the world, either spring is blooming or autumn is falling upon you. Regardless, it’s the fifth month of the year, so in celebration of that, I thought Friday’s Prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday may as well reflect this changeable time of year.
This week your Prompt will be ‘change’ in any form or definition of the word. Play with it, and have fun!
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at the prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post.
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people will come and read your post! The way to ping back, is to just copy and paste the URL of my post somewhere on your post. Then your URL will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. For example, in your post you can copy and paste the following: “This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-314/ ” The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
lindaghill.com 