My Two Blessings

“ Do you trust me ?” Sylvester’s voice reverberates through her mind. She wakes, curled on the ground, in the crook of the tree’s roots. Chirps and whistles, crackles and odd smells she can’t identify fill her ears and nose.  She opens her eyes. The light is dim, trees and bushes reach tall into the sky. Is it dusk or dawn?   She sits up and clamps her palms against her temples, dizzy. She’s sore   and covered in dust and leaves. She leans against the tree trunk and waits for her eyes to focus.   She grasps a handful of leaves and they disintegrate, dusting the forest floor. “ Do you ?” She thinks the voice is near, almost.   His voice sounds real.   She climbs to her feet; one hand holds onto the knobby tree.   She doesn’t remember any forest near her house, her town.   An urbanite to the core, she prefers the stone forest of the city.   How’d she get here?   She picks leaves out of her short cap of brunette hair and brushes dirt from h...

"Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now nothing more than estates taken over by the Buonaparte family."

I finished Fierce on the Page and Cohen really inspired me to get my butt back in the chair with all her wisdom.  I'll share a few more tidbits noted on my reading journey: Get to the Place of Grace:  "No matter how experienced you may be, each piece of writing arrives on its own terms, and you must learn to interpret its cries and give it what it needs.  When and what to revise, if and when its finished, and when to let it go into the world are questions whose answers must be sourced from the writing itself.  It can be difficult to know and much of what we writers do is trial and error (or practice)  I think the most common mistake we writers make is to hurry a piece of writing out of our hands and into the world before it is ready to go." Hubby keeps asking me when am I going to be finished with Eyes in the Ashes.  He read the first few chapters in the rough draft and fell in like with the story, in all its rough glory.  Little did he understand, i...

Ack!  It's truly been one of those days in which I haven't had much time to myself and I failed to write anything Sunday to post today.  My imagination was running wild this morning, tidbits of stories running through my head while showering.  What would happen if you suddenly went blind while driving?  Would  you have any warning?  What would you do? Slam on the brakes or try to pull  to the curb?  Would anyone stop or just think you are being an asshole.  How long before anyone stopped?  Would you be able to dial 911 on your phone or just wait until someone decided to see if you needed help.   Hmmm!  A name, a child, possibilities. Then on the way to work, just at the intersection where I do a uturn to our shop, an accident had just happened.  A truck smashed into a smaller car which was half crushed.  If I had been a minute earlier...  Lots of people rushing about so I made my way to work, thankful for the l...

Happy Sunday!  Supposedly our heat way is over, the highs should be in the 90's and our delta breezes are back.  I refused to do our usual two and half mile evening walk all week after attempting it in the heat without our usual evening cool off.  Gah!  Went out last night and it was balmy, breezy 70 ish.  Wonderful! I finished spelling out Pearl for the June Birthstone Bookology challenge P: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson is his second novel in the Millenium series. Salander is wanted for a triple murder and she chooses to simply disappear. Even the reader doesn't know if she is innocent or guilty and only knows what Blomkist does as he decides to investigate without her. E: Gods and Ends by Devon Monk is her third novel in the paranormal trilogy, Ordinary Magic. Vampires, devils, even a crochet and knitting rivalry almost turns into a gang war as Delaney works to protect the town of Ordinary, Oregon. A: Ashley Bell by  Dean Koontz...

A House Divided Love haunts Sadness prevails. Choices, consequences. Love tests, love fails. People change Love unconditional? There's no I told you so's Love tests, love fails Do you have to choose? Acceptance, rejection Can you go back? Love tests, love fails Once friends Now strangers Love haunts Love tested, love failed. ~ R.Lee McCormack ~

The following essay On Books is from Book 2, chapter 10 of  Michel De Montaigne’s Essays, translated by J.M Cohen.   Original: “I have no doubt that I often speak of things which are better treated by the masters of the craft, and with more truth.  This is simply a trial of my natural faculties and not of my acquired ones.  If anyone catches me in ignorance, he will score no triumph over me, since I can hardly be answerable to another for my reasoning’s, when I am not answerable for them to myself and am never satisfied with them.  Let the man who is in search of knowledge fish for it where it lies; there is nothing that I lay less claim too.  These are my fancies, in which I make no attempt to convey information about things, only about myself.  I may have objective knowledge one day or may perhaps had had it in the past, when I happened to light on passages that explained things.  But I have forgotten it all; for though I am a man of some r...

The year that Bibi Blair turned ten, which was twelve years before Death came calling on  her, the sky was a grim vault of sorrow nearly every day from January through mid March and the angels cried down flood after flood upon southern California.  Birthstone Bookology - P E A R L 

I'm currently going through the list of questions from Chapter 47 - Notice, Intent, Act in Fierce on the Page .   Like Artist's Way exercises  they pull thoughts and insights I generally haven't given much thought too and give voice to them. "What makes me want to sit down and write? And what keeps me there?"  Not why, but what this time and I do believe it is the desire to know more, discover and learn.  What keeps me there are the aha moments, the free flow of thought, ideas randomly popping into my head, the synchronicity of a resolution I hadn't even been aware of needing.  So what is stopping or has stopped me. "When do I avoid doing the writing I intend to do?"  In the past when I was feeling emotional or stressed, there were some things I didn't want to think about. I didn't want to cry or get mad all over again and avoided writing until the feeling passed  I know many writers work through their angst on the page.  I had...

The universe is trying to tell me something.  I signed up for the Writer's Digest Short Story class which began last week.  My muse has been hitting me on the head the past few days with TLC's Waterfalls.  I've had the chorus lyrics running through my head for the past couple nights: Don't go chasing waterfalls. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to. I know that you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all, But I think you're moving too fast. Then yesterday, she finally got through to me. The title of a story.  Yep, Chasing Waterfalls,  along with a couple character names and a inkling of an idea.   Then realized today I'm not quite ready to start writing just yet, so it wouldn't work for the WD class. So decided I'd work on Yellow Belly Shoppe for Cowards. It's one I began while taking classes at WVU and never quite finished it.    I keep running across the idea of writing 52 short stories, one a week, ...

Courtesy of Gunjankarun.com Happy Father's day to all the dads today where ever you are.  Hubby is enjoying a very relaxing day and we'll be having roast beef with yorkshire pudding this evening.   Summer has unofficially arrived in the form of a heat way and we will be baking for the next few days.   Officially Summer starts on Wednesday and I'm so happy to have several weeks off in which to play. We're giving James a couple weeks off because we know he is going to get bored, then we'll start doing math and perhaps some physics or chemistry experiments.  We have several books to tackle that we just haven't had time to read together so he's trying to decided between   Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov, Putinism by Walter Laqueur or even possibly an actual fiction book like Fahrenheit 451 .  Yes, he's very much into politics and foreign affairs.  I'm waiting with bated breath to see which he chooses.    Today is the start of wee...

Courtesy of Wikepedia Big C  Little C What Begins with C Thanks to Dr. Seuss We won't end up in a Tree Calliopes and carousels chugging, chanting, caroling.  Circling without a care.  Courteous citizens develop the knack, Reaching, stretching. Fingers to snatch That colorful, oval,  brass ring.  ~ R.Lee McCormack~

We're baking for the next few days...  

What are fences for?  What kind of fence do you have?  Aluminum, wood, iron or chain link?  Is it there to keep you in or others out? Do you keep your gate locked or trust that etiquette alone will keep others out? A boundary or a barrier.  Does your horse balk at the fence refusing to jump over or does it bound over effortlessly?  Does your dog dig under or jump over or sniff along the bottom, curious but cautious?  Forget the cat. We all know they'll slink through and under and over without any problem.   What about your metaphysical fence? Do you let yourself get fenced in, stuck in the ruts surrounding the fence?  Have you created a gigantic moat to keep others out which in turn keeps you in?  Or is the fence something fun to climb, to jump over, to scale, to rise above and see what is on the other side? Do you like to experiment with your fences, mixing them up every once in a while, exchanging short for tall, lots of openings to th...

Do you ever have those days in which you just want to hide away from the world but you know you can't. My dreams tend to reflect what's going on in the back of my mind.   An interesting phenomenon took place in my dreaming world.  For the longest time, I've had the same type of dream in which I'm at a school or university library.   Sometimes I'm there visiting, other times living there.  I leave to go the store.  When I decide to return, I get completely lost and either find myself half way across town or lost in a maze, unable to get back to where I started.    Last night, the dream started out in much the same way.  But instead of trying to go back home, I began to explore the different stores, shopping, food tasting, and just meandering about. Hmm? I wonder what that says about my life?  Progress is happening! While reading and outlining more of Fierce on the Pag e, I decided I'm more of a plotter than a pantster.  I began w...

Day 15 since I started posting and almost halfway through the month.  I've posted every single day. I've managed to get up an hour earlier almost every day, work on morning pages, dabble a bit with poetry and prompts.  Even with all life's stresses, I'm not letting it get in the way of writing and posting.  As I told hubby the other day, I've given myself the month of June to get back into writing, then I'll tackle Eyes in the Ashes and editing. More insight from Fierce on the Page .  I think we can all relate to avoiding the bathroom scale. Cohen sees a similarity between the scale and writing in Chapter 34: "Because I bet you the chai tea latte I skipped this morning that you are avoiding something in your writing with as much dedication and justification as I was avoiding my scale. You can't manage what you don't measure, as the old adage goes.  And by putting your head in the sand, you are depriving yourself of opportunities to meet your w...

Happy Sunday!  The past week have been quite hectic.  The air conditioner blew on hubby's Chevy.  I don't know how folks deal with being one car families.  You have to  coordinate everything you do and end up spending lots of time in the car.  We dealt with it pretty well until things went to heck Friday. We received a call at 7:00 am from the security company telling us our business phone lines were down. The landlord has been doing a lot of construction about the shopping center and a few weeks back managed to cut our phone lines. We thought they did it again so didn't worry about it too much until my technician texts to tell me all four lines are down.  We call the phone company fix it guy who says to report it again to AT&T before he can be dispatched. Because it took them a week or more last time to do anything, I decided to order a cell phone from Verizon and pick it up locally.   Since we expect the mechanic to call and let us know t...

Blank What do you see, When you draw a blank? Letters, foggy and fuzzy  Roam and flee. Words, simple. Yet not. Like butterflies waiting to land. Do you catch them or wait? They sit on the tip of your tongue. On the back of your hand. Rhythm and rhyme, Let it be. Make you see. Take your time.  Words, simple. Yet not. Color pens bleed Across the page. Strokes and symbols Take on need. Blank and blind Thoughts and letters, Illuminate and illustrate What comes to mind. Words, simple. Yet not. ~R. Lee McCormack~

Courtesy of BBC: The Runaway Bride What exactly does that mean, resting on your laurels?  It basically means glorifying what you've accomplished in the past and not try to further yourself.  I've written a lot of essays, flash fiction and little stories over the past couple years for classes and the temptation to pick one when I'm having an off day or busy day is hard to resist.  However, the point of this exercise, posting everyday is to work on my writing and I don't want to regurgitate or revise something just a little to do a quick post.   I did that a couple years back with most of the posts for an A to Z monthly writing challenge and it was most unsatisfying.   I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment.   So, I'm promising myself not to rest on my laurels.   Today's goal:  clean up the bookshelves, box up all the 11th grade books, notebooks and papers and make room for the new.   There are always a few books or things that simply...

Congratulations to James for completing 11th Grade with all A's Woot! Woot! 

Yes, my brain works in insane ways.  I was cleaning out the litter boxes yesterday and two words popped into my mind:  poop and grief.    Neither hubby or James take care of the litter boxes. They don't have the stomach for it, so it's always been my responsibility.   When Herbie died last August, I did a major cleaning as if getting rid of his scent would make things all better.  You really don't think grief will hit you hard, when an dies, but it does. One of our fur babies, raised from birth, a member of our family. I still see him out of the corner of my eye, sitting outside the patio door. Plus mom's been gone almost four years now.  And there's the loss of a couple cyber relationships in my life that were very important. Grief comes in waves - some big that knock you over, some little ones that misplace the sand beneath your feet, and make you take a step backwards.  So what does this have with poop and the litter box?  Cat's poop...

When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature this past year, I was quite surprised and skeptical. I've read the works of various prize winners over the past few years.   There have been a great number of awesome writers as well as not so awesome. However they were novelists, poets, writers, and/or activists.Why would the committee choose a musician?  The committee's reason:          "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition" While his words and songs are interesting, could his music be considered poetry?   Perhaps.   Did he really read Moby Dick and All Quiet on the Western Front in Grammar school?   Probably not, but that's being nit picky.   He's always been an odd duck to me and people are inspired by different things so who am I to say.  I think I'll hold on to my skepticism a while longer.

I'm going to be stuck on Fierce on the Page for quite a while as I it read again, writing down all the points I underlined, making notes to myself, thinking about what she says.   I highlighted a few things from chapter 28 Fail Harder:  In japan, wabi-sabi is an aesthetic rooted in the art of imperfection, celebration of the flaw that makes a piece of art unique.  When you embrace imperfection in your writing, you welcome the human condition as your source of your writing. This helps you cultivate the compassion and acceptance that you and your writing deserve. When you set your sights on perfection, it's easy to forget that mistakes yield some of the richest and most surprising material --insights, wisdom, and writing that is not accessible through so-called success.  James Joyce proclaimed mistakes to be the portal to discovery. It is also important to keep in mind that what you consider 'failure' can shape shift before your eyes as your contexts and in...

Happy Sunday!  J une is turning into a very busy reading month. My 52 Books group is celebrating all things fantasy including the 20th anniversary of the publication of J.K.Rowling's  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone .  Bloomsbury Publishing has come up with 4 special editions , each with the house flags on the cover. I'm trying to decide which one I want or if I should just get all four.  *grin*   We are also celebrating Father's Day and well as the June Solstice which ushers in Summer in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter in the Southern Hemisphere. With the beginning of Summer, we will be also diving into a summer long read of Leo Tolstoy's  War and Peace  starting on June 18th.  June means I have three birthstones to choose from for the Birthstone Bookology reading challenge : Pearl, Moonstone or Alexandrite.  I'm going to work on spelling out Pearl since I have a few P books and L books as well as chunky books on my shel...